I don't know why every desktop doesn't include a basic spreadsheet superclass, since it is so common in so many different kinds of apps. I'd expect by now that the OS would include a basic SQL storage/query engine, an app that hooks code and data objects to a 3D array, and a GUI for sheets. And a basic text editor. The original Mac was complete with those apps in 1984, even though only the patterns (not the code, certainly not the source) were available to every app. Over 20 years later, and users and developers still have to roll our own, and use inconsistent GUIs, interfaces, APIs, data models, and just plain redundant bloat.
People like Bricklin who kicked off all this "personal computing" made a lot more changes in the right direction with a lot less technology, for even fewer people, than we've done in the generation since we inherited their vision.
A shielding electric field would require more energy. Higher acceleration over the same distance would require only higher power, but not more energy. Although I don't see why more power can't be delivered by a laser - we have developed lasers which can destroy cities, and materials that can accept megawatts per square meter.
Of course that lifting energy is recovered on the way down. And if such a large object cannot accommodate high power delivery, then its redesign requires looking at more than just leaving an unshielded car on the outside.
I really liked _Telempath_, too. I read all the Callahan's stories, which really touched me. I'm a recovering ex-hippie technocrat from Long Island, so I expect I eventually willam haven to visited Callahan's.
Why would I travel at only 200KPH? How about 2000Km:h, on an engineered track, through the near-vacuum past 100-200Km out? Space is an acceleration game, so really I'm concerned only with how long I have to spend under the crush. At 1G, I could get to 2Mm:h (Megameters per hour) in under 1 minute. 15 minutes through the atmosphere, another minute up to 2Mm:h, then a couple of hours to the top (another 1.5G deceleration for a minute) once friction is immaterial. At 1.5G all the way up halfway, then slowing 1.5G the rest of the way, that's 2 minutes to the top. I don't know if I'd want to fry on a daily commute, but why live with Earth limits when we're leaving the Earth?
The other solution they're not considering in that article is to engineer the elevator car to travel inside the cable, rather than outside. Use the mass necessary for tensile strength for radiation shielding, too.
These are 30 second solutions. I'm sure the next decades before we actually deploy the spacehooks will find lots of better solutions.
Time Magazine is smart to recognize that Torvalds is a hero. But Time Magazine doesn't run any recognized "Hero Office", so they don't have the power to make anyone "officially" anything. Maybe an "official subscriber", but that comes with knighthood, anyway.
I agree about the editorial cycle's declining contribution to most "great" authors' late works, especially in SF. Douglas Adams might be the worst loss to that permissive process.
If you want a great intro to Spider Robinson, try starting with Time Travelers Strictly Cash, the hilarious (and poignant) first book in the "Callahan's" series. It's short, fantastic, and has some non-Callahan's short stories.
If you want a great intro to Robert A. Heinlein, try starting with practically any of his dozens of first-rate books published from 1939-73, during which he defined "science fiction", leading a group of prolific writers. There's some good stuff later, but not nearly as reliably inspired or executed.
AFAIK, cities can put restrictions on products sold within their limits. For example, NYC has laws prohibiting dangerous devices from being sold, from guns (possibly a special case), to "blackjacks", brass knuckles, etc. The proposed NYC law is consistent with existing recycling requirements, which have not been found to violate "Interstate Commerce" privileges retained by the Federal government.
NYC is also part of a nationwide movement of cities and states to implement Greenhouse mitigation policies, which can force out-of-state corporations to avoid acting certain ways within the jurisdiction of those entities. For decades, California has required emissions standards higher than the national requirements. That hasn't violated any "Interstate Commerce" rules, though it has turned the entire world a lot cleaner.
So not for nuthin' does the USSC have to keep its spankhand holstered when NYC does the right thing with our own backyard. Robes are delicate, and we wouldn't want nuthin' ta break or nuthin'.
Is it censorship if the Internet content/connection suppression is performed not by the government, but by a cartel of corporations that control the nation's traffic on their backbones?
Electronic Recycling Drop-Off Event Sunday, November 12th, 8am to 12:30pm Lincoln Center - Service Road
We will accept working and non-working computers, laptops, monitors, printers, keyboards, mice, cables, TVs and VCRs(no wooden consoles only plastic case models), fax machines, cell phones and pagers.
Saturday, December 9th, 8am to 4pm at PS 321 180 7th Avenue, between 1st & 2nd Streets Park Slope, Brooklyn
Sunday, January 7th, 2007, 8am to 4pm 4th annual 'After the Holidays' event at Union Square Park - North Plaza 17th St & Broadway
Brewer and Stringer are promoting a new City law, Intro 104, to require manufacturers to recycle products in a complete product lifecycle:
Intro. 104, sponsored by Council Member Bill De Blasio, which would require manufacturers to collect discarded electronic products. Intro. 104, the Electronics Recycling and Reuse Act, would remove many of these products from landfills and incinerators currently used by the City of New York, as these products pose an environmental risk when burned, buried or recycled improperly.
Turn on my V.C.R., same one I've had for years James Brown on the T.A.M.I show, Same tape I've had for years I sit in my old car, same one I've had for years Old battery's running down, it ran for years and years
Turn on the radio, the static hurts my ears Tell me, where would I go? I ain't been out in years Turn on the stereo, it's played for years and years An Otis Redding song, it's all I own
When the world is running down You make the best of what's still around
You didn't get Civics wrong, you got logic wrong. You are inventing a hidden premise, that the contributions we're talking about went (or would go) to newly elected Democrats, rather than incumbents. The story, and my posts, doesn't say what you are saying about the incomers. The new (predicted) Democratic majority has the power in its ranking members controlling the committees, so they would have gotten the bribes. That they didn't (nearly as much) shows that Republicans are much more bribeable, at least 2:1 (more, considering the lesser value of bribing the minority).
It's true that the generic ballot showed Democrats with at least a 15% preference over Republicans, while individual races did not favor most specific Democrats by that kind of margin. But that's again the reason to bribe the Democratic incumbents who were absolutely expected to control specific committees on which they were the ranking members.
That is the real system. It's obvious that the boneheaded rank privilege and majority tyranny committee control (of all, by even the barest majority) system is the second biggest problem with Congress. After the party/bribery system. But we're talking about the current committee system, which is the target of the current party/bribe system. Which is why the 2:1 bribes of outgoing Republicans shows just how much worse are Republican bribetakers than Democrats.
I expect the next round of reports, in 2008, to show Republicans still disproportionately bribed to their power, especially as the Democratic momentum continues, expected to take the White House along with keeping (and increasing) its Congressional majority. The Democrats will still not have 2:1 bribe superiority over Republicans, even though their margins and power will be greater than Bush had with his majority. Partly because the Republican bribes measured by the report we're discussing are largely the product of the "Permanent Republican Majority" machine built by Rove and Delay for over 12 years, with quite a lot of momentum and a full pipeline of bribe/graft. But partly because Democrats work for cheaper, mostly because they are influenced by different stakeholders. Different (less rich) corporations, and plenty of noncorporations. So they don't get as much in bribes as Republicans who work entirely on the pay for play model.
Which is where that 2:1 margin of activity comes from. An indisputable difference that leaves Democrats "far behind" Republicans in taking bribes, despite the conventional "wisdom" that there's no difference, repeated in this story.
Well, I can tell from your post that you've been eating the plentiful Republican propaganda for quite a while. Kerry's Yale grades weren't as low as Bush's, though I fail to see how that's relevant in any way. Not just generally irrelevant, but when has Kerry banned "dirty words"?
You got Gore wrong, too. Not just the fact that it was his wife who Zappa fought in the 1980s (I learned all about it from standing in Zappa audiences). But you reduce Bush's 2000 election theft to Gore "throwing the country in a tizzy for 6 years", when Gore's failure was in conceding, when he'd won, just to keep the country united - which Bush then abused into the 6 year "tizzy".
And the events of the past 6 Bush years, along with the Republican Congress impeaching Clinton - while stopping him from attacking bin Laden - have amply demonstrated the vast rightwing conspiracy. That targeted not only Clinton, but the entire country, which is why we finally threw out their representatives this past week. Your version lies about Hillary Clinton's statement, which was not about how her husband stained a blue dress, but how a failed investigation into a made-up land scandal had produced only a white lie to protect her husband's cheating, and was impeaching him for that.
In the context of the rest of your post, it's obvious that you're a "drown in the bathtub" Republican. You hate our government. You're mad at Bush only because he blew it. He blew it because Americans don't want to drown our government. We want to join together under the greatest government system that's ever run in the world, and do all kinds of important things for ourselves, and even for others.
Feel free to join the rest of you closet Republicans fleeing to the propaganda safety of calling yourselves "Libertarians". Pat Buchanan's fascist party is waiting for you with open arms, along with whatever mutated spawn of Ross Perot's huckster party. You're free to swallow the propaganda of the corporatists who hate our government that stops them from attacking us. But don't expect me to slink along with you, just because they've convinced you that gang of Washington wives want to take away your dirty words. Especially when the ones you're attacking the most are the ones who least try to do that, as demonstrated by the actual facts in the story we're discussing.
The point of this thread is that there is a big difference between the two parties. No one is saying that Democrats are "perfect", or even "good". But the story summary rehashed the same media line that "there's no difference", when in fact a 2:1 difference is a very big difference.
There are multiple problems with American politics. The entire system where parties collect and share bribes and votes within their membership is a fundamentally broken machine. But the two different parties run that machine very differently, as seen even in basic data like that 2:1 lobbying activity.
You can target the other, more basic problem, but that's not what we're talking about. To say that the difference doesn't exist, despite the same underlying system, is just plain wrong. And by lying about Democrats' relative integrity, it gives yet another unfair boost to Republicans. Which is another problem, even more fundamental than the party/bribery system.
Because power is wielded by the committees, more than by the individual congressmembers, or even the whole chamber. And nothing in that article, or my post, mentioned donating money to Democrat challengers, rather to Democrat incumbents. Who have been favored for the entire election cycle to wield that committee power as part of the majority.
"Not supposed" to win? What, by the public predictions that have "supposed" a Democratic House and usually a Democratic Senate for months? By the even more accurate "government relations" offices of the corporate bribers^Wcontributors?
After the committee chair and ranking minority member, it doesn't matter how senior you are - only your membership in the majority, and friendship with the majority chair. Even the ranking minority member has influence only by getting on TV, against the possibility they'll chair the committee in the next Congress.
Your version isn't how the Congress works. But it looks like it is how the spin works. Which, combined with Republicans' higher campaign expenses producing a higher bribe demand, is how their corporate bribers worked, too. Worked wrong, this year, in every sense of the word.
No, no one said the Democrats were all angelic, except for the Republicans (and their drag "Libertarians") cooking up that excluded middle falacy in strawman clothing.
If you want to call your worthless grandma a "bum on the street" that's your business. But you're pretty weird to wait for Democrats to ban the videogames that dress up your fantasyworld. Because Republicans have been busy doing that, while you bow and scrape to cover for them.
I just cited a specific example of that BS that's staring you right in the face.
And even though I never said any of those things you're making up as strawmen, let's see some specific examples from you. Or is just lying about "moral equivalence" the thing to do when you're a Republican forced to pretend you're a "Libertarian", once Republican power finally wears out its welcome?
If the connection on which she was picked up was a real connection to a real conspiracy to explode real bombs on real planes, then she's entirely different from people with no connections to anything but a copy of _The Anarchist's Cookbook_ floating around their hard drives for amusement.
Enough of this terrorism. Where people spread fear through the media. All some asshole terrorist has to do to earn their paycheck is say "boo", and thousands scurry to repeat it until it really is a scary roar. Download and read your copy of the Cookbook, and even copies of the poison manuals with all your goth and punk friends.
Just don't hurt anyone. And don't give the terrorists any more help by spreading fear or insisting on ignorance. Either one of those earns you 27 virgins in hell: jarhead cops busting down your door to catch you with real evidence, and life in solitary, broken up by occasional "interviews" by overzealous "veterans".
Republicans are the top beneficiaries of such donations, but the Dems aren't too far behind.
just over $4 million to federal candidates in the 2006 election cycle. The money wasn't doled out evenly, though; Republican candidates pulled in 67 percent of it.
Democrats were favored to win the House in that cycle, and most likely to take the Senate, too - reversal of complete control of the government, which in fact did happen. Even so, Republicans still pulled in much more, two to one. That ration is most certainly "far behind".
Democrats need to spend more of their bribes on better PR, even if just so Slashdot doesn't repeat the same "Democrats are just as bad" BS as does the corporate mass media whenever Republicans are much worse.
If I'm paying the bill (along with the rest of the American taxpayers), it damn well better be flying public transport. Then I can suck down all the ethanol I want, while the government chauffeur takes me to my free stemcell transplant in time for my Olympic tryout.
Well, if the 9/11 Commission had accepted my recommendation that all air traffic fly preprogrammed routes by GPS, with flight crew on live standby working as distributed traffic controllers for the entire system, we might be OK. Because the Democrats are saying they'll enforce all Commission recommendations, and it would be only a matter of time before general traffic, especially in the air, were also flown on such a system. So maybe Santa Pelosi will bring us our flying cars after all. Maybe we should hold out for solar powered flying cars, when Gore is president in 2009.
Americans vote Democrats control of our government, and suddenly 3 days later solar power could be affordable. When they actually take power on 1/3/2007, will we finally get our goddamn flying cars?
Too late: the lawyers come out of the woodwork only after the public has not only bought $BILLIONS of these products, but is committed to their upgrade path.
That's the entire point of submarine patents. And the reason they should be outlawed, before even the entire patent system gets its necessary overhaul.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know why every desktop doesn't include a basic spreadsheet superclass, since it is so common in so many different kinds of apps. I'd expect by now that the OS would include a basic SQL storage/query engine, an app that hooks code and data objects to a 3D array, and a GUI for sheets. And a basic text editor. The original Mac was complete with those apps in 1984, even though only the patterns (not the code, certainly not the source) were available to every app. Over 20 years later, and users and developers still have to roll our own, and use inconsistent GUIs, interfaces, APIs, data models, and just plain redundant bloat.
People like Bricklin who kicked off all this "personal computing" made a lot more changes in the right direction with a lot less technology, for even fewer people, than we've done in the generation since we inherited their vision.
A shielding electric field would require more energy. Higher acceleration over the same distance would require only higher power, but not more energy. Although I don't see why more power can't be delivered by a laser - we have developed lasers which can destroy cities, and materials that can accept megawatts per square meter.
Of course that lifting energy is recovered on the way down. And if such a large object cannot accommodate high power delivery, then its redesign requires looking at more than just leaving an unshielded car on the outside.
I really liked _Telempath_, too. I read all the Callahan's stories, which really touched me. I'm a recovering ex-hippie technocrat from Long Island, so I expect I eventually willam haven to visited Callahan's.
Why would I travel at only 200KPH? How about 2000Km:h, on an engineered track, through the near-vacuum past 100-200Km out? Space is an acceleration game, so really I'm concerned only with how long I have to spend under the crush. At 1G, I could get to 2Mm:h (Megameters per hour) in under 1 minute. 15 minutes through the atmosphere, another minute up to 2Mm:h, then a couple of hours to the top (another 1.5G deceleration for a minute) once friction is immaterial. At 1.5G all the way up halfway, then slowing 1.5G the rest of the way, that's 2 minutes to the top. I don't know if I'd want to fry on a daily commute, but why live with Earth limits when we're leaving the Earth?
The other solution they're not considering in that article is to engineer the elevator car to travel inside the cable, rather than outside. Use the mass necessary for tensile strength for radiation shielding, too.
These are 30 second solutions. I'm sure the next decades before we actually deploy the spacehooks will find lots of better solutions.
Time Magazine is smart to recognize that Torvalds is a hero. But Time Magazine doesn't run any recognized "Hero Office", so they don't have the power to make anyone "officially" anything. Maybe an "official subscriber", but that comes with knighthood, anyway.
I agree about the editorial cycle's declining contribution to most "great" authors' late works, especially in SF. Douglas Adams might be the worst loss to that permissive process.
When I read TTSC, there were none in the series ;).
If you want a great intro to Spider Robinson, try starting with Time Travelers Strictly Cash, the hilarious (and poignant) first book in the "Callahan's" series. It's short, fantastic, and has some non-Callahan's short stories.
If you want a great intro to Robert A. Heinlein, try starting with practically any of his dozens of first-rate books published from 1939-73, during which he defined "science fiction", leading a group of prolific writers. There's some good stuff later, but not nearly as reliably inspired or executed.
AFAIK, cities can put restrictions on products sold within their limits. For example, NYC has laws prohibiting dangerous devices from being sold, from guns (possibly a special case), to "blackjacks", brass knuckles, etc. The proposed NYC law is consistent with existing recycling requirements, which have not been found to violate "Interstate Commerce" privileges retained by the Federal government.
NYC is also part of a nationwide movement of cities and states to implement Greenhouse mitigation policies, which can force out-of-state corporations to avoid acting certain ways within the jurisdiction of those entities. For decades, California has required emissions standards higher than the national requirements. That hasn't violated any "Interstate Commerce" rules, though it has turned the entire world a lot cleaner.
So not for nuthin' does the USSC have to keep its spankhand holstered when NYC does the right thing with our own backyard. Robes are delicate, and we wouldn't want nuthin' ta break or nuthin'.
Is it censorship if the Internet content/connection suppression is performed not by the government, but by a cartel of corporations that control the nation's traffic on their backbones?
Brewer and Stringer are promoting a new City law, Intro 104, to require manufacturers to recycle products in a complete product lifecycle:
The Council's Technology in Government committee is running a public feedback survey on recycling.
When the World Is Running Down" by the Police
BZZZT!
You were supposed to meaninglessly criticize me for typo'ing "ration" instead of "ration". Better luck next time around.
You didn't get Civics wrong, you got logic wrong. You are inventing a hidden premise, that the contributions we're talking about went (or would go) to newly elected Democrats, rather than incumbents. The story, and my posts, doesn't say what you are saying about the incomers. The new (predicted) Democratic majority has the power in its ranking members controlling the committees, so they would have gotten the bribes. That they didn't (nearly as much) shows that Republicans are much more bribeable, at least 2:1 (more, considering the lesser value of bribing the minority).
It's true that the generic ballot showed Democrats with at least a 15% preference over Republicans, while individual races did not favor most specific Democrats by that kind of margin. But that's again the reason to bribe the Democratic incumbents who were absolutely expected to control specific committees on which they were the ranking members.
That is the real system. It's obvious that the boneheaded rank privilege and majority tyranny committee control (of all, by even the barest majority) system is the second biggest problem with Congress. After the party/bribery system. But we're talking about the current committee system, which is the target of the current party/bribe system. Which is why the 2:1 bribes of outgoing Republicans shows just how much worse are Republican bribetakers than Democrats.
I expect the next round of reports, in 2008, to show Republicans still disproportionately bribed to their power, especially as the Democratic momentum continues, expected to take the White House along with keeping (and increasing) its Congressional majority. The Democrats will still not have 2:1 bribe superiority over Republicans, even though their margins and power will be greater than Bush had with his majority. Partly because the Republican bribes measured by the report we're discussing are largely the product of the "Permanent Republican Majority" machine built by Rove and Delay for over 12 years, with quite a lot of momentum and a full pipeline of bribe/graft. But partly because Democrats work for cheaper, mostly because they are influenced by different stakeholders. Different (less rich) corporations, and plenty of noncorporations. So they don't get as much in bribes as Republicans who work entirely on the pay for play model.
Which is where that 2:1 margin of activity comes from. An indisputable difference that leaves Democrats "far behind" Republicans in taking bribes, despite the conventional "wisdom" that there's no difference, repeated in this story.
Well, I can tell from your post that you've been eating the plentiful Republican propaganda for quite a while. Kerry's Yale grades weren't as low as Bush's, though I fail to see how that's relevant in any way. Not just generally irrelevant, but when has Kerry banned "dirty words"?
You got Gore wrong, too. Not just the fact that it was his wife who Zappa fought in the 1980s (I learned all about it from standing in Zappa audiences). But you reduce Bush's 2000 election theft to Gore "throwing the country in a tizzy for 6 years", when Gore's failure was in conceding, when he'd won, just to keep the country united - which Bush then abused into the 6 year "tizzy".
And the events of the past 6 Bush years, along with the Republican Congress impeaching Clinton - while stopping him from attacking bin Laden - have amply demonstrated the vast rightwing conspiracy. That targeted not only Clinton, but the entire country, which is why we finally threw out their representatives this past week. Your version lies about Hillary Clinton's statement, which was not about how her husband stained a blue dress, but how a failed investigation into a made-up land scandal had produced only a white lie to protect her husband's cheating, and was impeaching him for that.
In the context of the rest of your post, it's obvious that you're a "drown in the bathtub" Republican. You hate our government. You're mad at Bush only because he blew it. He blew it because Americans don't want to drown our government. We want to join together under the greatest government system that's ever run in the world, and do all kinds of important things for ourselves, and even for others.
Feel free to join the rest of you closet Republicans fleeing to the propaganda safety of calling yourselves "Libertarians". Pat Buchanan's fascist party is waiting for you with open arms, along with whatever mutated spawn of Ross Perot's huckster party. You're free to swallow the propaganda of the corporatists who hate our government that stops them from attacking us. But don't expect me to slink along with you, just because they've convinced you that gang of Washington wives want to take away your dirty words. Especially when the ones you're attacking the most are the ones who least try to do that, as demonstrated by the actual facts in the story we're discussing.
The point of this thread is that there is a big difference between the two parties. No one is saying that Democrats are "perfect", or even "good". But the story summary rehashed the same media line that "there's no difference", when in fact a 2:1 difference is a very big difference.
There are multiple problems with American politics. The entire system where parties collect and share bribes and votes within their membership is a fundamentally broken machine. But the two different parties run that machine very differently, as seen even in basic data like that 2:1 lobbying activity.
You can target the other, more basic problem, but that's not what we're talking about. To say that the difference doesn't exist, despite the same underlying system, is just plain wrong. And by lying about Democrats' relative integrity, it gives yet another unfair boost to Republicans. Which is another problem, even more fundamental than the party/bribery system.
Because power is wielded by the committees, more than by the individual congressmembers, or even the whole chamber. And nothing in that article, or my post, mentioned donating money to Democrat challengers, rather to Democrat incumbents. Who have been favored for the entire election cycle to wield that committee power as part of the majority.
"Not supposed" to win? What, by the public predictions that have "supposed" a Democratic House and usually a Democratic Senate for months? By the even more accurate "government relations" offices of the corporate bribers^Wcontributors?
After the committee chair and ranking minority member, it doesn't matter how senior you are - only your membership in the majority, and friendship with the majority chair. Even the ranking minority member has influence only by getting on TV, against the possibility they'll chair the committee in the next Congress.
Your version isn't how the Congress works. But it looks like it is how the spin works. Which, combined with Republicans' higher campaign expenses producing a higher bribe demand, is how their corporate bribers worked, too. Worked wrong, this year, in every sense of the word.
OK, "evil agent", you've admitted your Republicans are evil, with a 9E6 user#. Does your Republican self-referentiality ever bottom out?
No, no one said the Democrats were all angelic, except for the Republicans (and their drag "Libertarians") cooking up that excluded middle falacy in strawman clothing.
If you want to call your worthless grandma a "bum on the street" that's your business. But you're pretty weird to wait for Democrats to ban the videogames that dress up your fantasyworld. Because Republicans have been busy doing that, while you bow and scrape to cover for them.
I just cited a specific example of that BS that's staring you right in the face.
And even though I never said any of those things you're making up as strawmen, let's see some specific examples from you. Or is just lying about "moral equivalence" the thing to do when you're a Republican forced to pretend you're a "Libertarian", once Republican power finally wears out its welcome?
If the connection on which she was picked up was a real connection to a real conspiracy to explode real bombs on real planes, then she's entirely different from people with no connections to anything but a copy of _The Anarchist's Cookbook_ floating around their hard drives for amusement.
Enough of this terrorism. Where people spread fear through the media. All some asshole terrorist has to do to earn their paycheck is say "boo", and thousands scurry to repeat it until it really is a scary roar. Download and read your copy of the Cookbook, and even copies of the poison manuals with all your goth and punk friends.
Just don't hurt anyone. And don't give the terrorists any more help by spreading fear or insisting on ignorance. Either one of those earns you 27 virgins in hell: jarhead cops busting down your door to catch you with real evidence, and life in solitary, broken up by occasional "interviews" by overzealous "veterans".
Democrats were favored to win the House in that cycle, and most likely to take the Senate, too - reversal of complete control of the government, which in fact did happen. Even so, Republicans still pulled in much more, two to one. That ration is most certainly "far behind".
Democrats need to spend more of their bribes on better PR, even if just so Slashdot doesn't repeat the same "Democrats are just as bad" BS as does the corporate mass media whenever Republicans are much worse.
If I'm paying the bill (along with the rest of the American taxpayers), it damn well better be flying public transport. Then I can suck down all the ethanol I want, while the government chauffeur takes me to my free stemcell transplant in time for my Olympic tryout.
Well, if the 9/11 Commission had accepted my recommendation that all air traffic fly preprogrammed routes by GPS, with flight crew on live standby working as distributed traffic controllers for the entire system, we might be OK. Because the Democrats are saying they'll enforce all Commission recommendations, and it would be only a matter of time before general traffic, especially in the air, were also flown on such a system. So maybe Santa Pelosi will bring us our flying cars after all. Maybe we should hold out for solar powered flying cars, when Gore is president in 2009.
Americans vote Democrats control of our government, and suddenly 3 days later solar power could be affordable. When they actually take power on 1/3/2007, will we finally get our goddamn flying cars?
Too late: the lawyers come out of the woodwork only after the public has not only bought $BILLIONS of these products, but is committed to their upgrade path.
That's the entire point of submarine patents. And the reason they should be outlawed, before even the entire patent system gets its necessary overhaul.