Re:Assholes calling cops
on
The DIY Tank
·
· Score: 1
I've seen tracked vehicles such as tanks with what look like rubber pads on the tracks to protect the roads.
Depending on how they're installed, I could see adding/removing them to be less than a minute per pad. Might take half an hour just because there's a lot of them.
Work the same odds for Australia and you will find they are about 1/10 the US number. An order of magnitude is a big difference regardless of how small the numbers are.
Agreed, but if you look at the evidence then you'll also find that our non-gun murder rate is still higher than Australia's, though it's been closing(US murder rate has been dropping faster than Australias).
Also, in many areas of the USA you're as safe or safer than Australia. Because of the independence of individual states and even cities in the USA, there's a broad variation between them. Consider that the places with the worst crime rates in the USA tend to be the ones with the most restrictive gun control laws. DC is close to the top of the list year after year, for example.
What if her response had been, "What are the odds I'll be able to retreive my gun, unlock it, load it, and successfully fend off a murderer/rapist?"
My response would be: Why are you storing a self defense weapon locked and unloaded?
If she, living alone, still wants it locked up, there are fast open safes available that you could store the loaded weapon in. Time into the safe is under 5 seconds with a little practice.
What percentage of people who have a gun are actually able to use it in these circumstances they imagine it will be so useful in? Any real statistics out there?
Again, what percentage of people who have a gun are involved in accidental / misuse / etc?
Same site, about 1400 fatal accidents total in 1995 from guns. You're 700 times more likely to defend yourself with your weapon than you are to accidentally kill yourself. On the misuse side, I'd include crimes & suicides, but studies have shown that substitution is strong with suicide(IE if unable to get a gun rather than not killing themselves they'll do it in a different way). As for crimes, that's what personal defense weapons are for, and just because you criminalize guns doesn't mean that you get them out of the criminals hands, and suddenly they have a force advantage.
In any case, I recently had a conversation with a pro-gun man. It was very civil, so no over the top rhetoric. When asked what he would do if his teenage child ever got pissed off at him, and in a fit of incredibly poor judgement takes the gun and shoots you with it. Then realizing what he's done, turns it on himself.
Very rare, in households with legitimate guns. More frequent in households with illegal guns(IE Felon in the house, stolen, gang, etc...). Most gun owners at least try to teach their children a greater amount of personal responsability. In addition, my grandfather started squirrel hunting, unsupervised, when he was 12.
Of course, around here I realized that you were echoing the earlier poster, so I'll simply finish with dog != gun.
Well, to be perfectly honest, assuming she's trained them well, 3 huge dogs will indeed result in an increase in safety at home at least as much as a gun. Crooks tend to be cowards, so going after a house with dogs is lower on the list than a house without dogs. Even if the dog is normally a creampuff, there's often a switch when their family expresses real fear. Even a lab that will normally let children ride on it and pull it's tail without attacking will often attack in such circumstances.
However, Dogs + Gun would be even safer, again, assuming a certain minimum level of training.
And the gun would quickly be cheaper. 3 huge dogs probably eat a couple hundred dollars of food a month, and that's not even going into vet bills and such. They're probably 'part of the family' though, so I won't go further.
On the other hand, I also live alone, but must travel for extended periods on occasion where I couldn't take a pet with me. I wouldn't put a pet through extended boarding, so I don't have a dog. I DO have a gun though.
It had nothing to do with the novels, the only thing it had going for it was casting, which was awesome, when I read the books I still picture Sting as Feyd, and Kyle MacLachlan as Paul. Though Patrick Steward as Gurney is a stretch, he was nominated as the sexiest man alive playing a character called "a wretched hump of a man" in the novel.
Same with me. I watch the movie while I was still a young teenager, it wasn't until years later that I found the book. I remember reading the book and going 'oh THAT was what was going on!'
Let's see, I remember the movie and the TV series. I'll have to find Children of Dune.
The movie I enjoyed, but had a number of parts I didn't understand until I read the book. The mini-series, having many more times the length, was MUCH better. Improved production values helped as well. On the whole, I prefer the series.
Given the scope of Herbert's books, it'll be interesting to see how well they can do being restricted to a 2hr or so format, rather than something that you'd need an old style intermission if you showed it in the theaters.
Interesting, though is there a way to preview music? I went to the site, all I can get is the promo page.
If what you say is true I'd be venturing off the beaten track. I hope the songs are indexed well. So far all my forays into non-radio music has been negative. I just don't like punk rock and such.
Besides, once you get a full time job you tend to value your time higher and your money lower. It also tends to make people appreciate the work put into making the music.
This.
I've been considering joining a pay music site with the announcements that at least some songs will be available without DRM restrictions.
The two I'm aware of are Apple iTunes and Amazon, at least for the major labels. If I sign up for one, it'll be on the basis of overall cost, selection, and convenience. Note: I don't own an iPod.
Anybody have experience with both that can make a recommendation?
RDRAM produced it's heat unevenly, whereas SDRAM and it's DDX equivalents produce it much more evenly. This resulted in a case where a single chip or even portion of a chip could be producing the majority of the heat in the RDRAM. The metal was to spread the heat out for dissipation.
I'm not 100% up on the market, but the spreaders/sinks on many memory sticks today are more for marketing gimmicks than for performance purposes. They look neat, so they make it onto sticks indended for 'performance' markets and the window case & LED types. Well, you can also argue that they help prevent ESD damage.
Cheapo computers and ram don't have them because they're not really necessary, and can sometimes even reduce performance.
Yes, I know that the threat isn't the same as actually taking legal action, that's why I called it a scare tactic.
And for many of the letters I've seen evidence for, if it took them 20 minutes I'd be surprised. Many look almost like the form letters of old with open spaces to type in the relevant information via typewriter.
As for the $50k defense fund, I'd hit the RNC up, personally. They'd probably be willing to throw that much at it just to keep anything embarrasing out of the public eye, even if it'd only be embarrasing if taken out of context.
Okay, We have price fixing to both increase the price of DDR SDRAM, and price fixing to kill RDRAM? They seem mutually exclusive to me.
From my memory, I think what killed RDRAM was that it cost substantially more than standard RAM, and benchmarking showed it was no better or worse on most tasks than SDRAM/DDR. Not to mention having uneven heat loads requiring heat spreaders to ensure you don't cook a portion of the memory chip.
Another point would be that Rambus killed itself by making licensing hard enough that you ended up with few enough manufacturers willing to go through the expense/effort that collusion was possible.
In any case, pretty easy to avoid Rambus memory products, too expensive and incompatible with the systems I like.
Might not be as easy as you think. SDRAM, for example, uses at least one patent held by Rambus. This, however, was known at the time and Rambus agreed to relatively light patent terms during the standard setting process. It still brings in millions though.
The issue here was Rambus, despite being a member of the standards body didn't disclose their patent as required by the terms to be part of the body, as a matter of fact using the meetings to further refine the patent to cover what the standards body was making part of the standard.
Then, once it was standard and widespread, pulled out the patent and started demanding excessive royalties.
I don't might the standard, disclosed patents. They did do work developing the processes covered by the patent. I object to the submarine patents.
And to be honest, lawyers send overreaching, unenforceable nastygrams all the time. Whether it's claiming copyright or trademark infringement where there is none, or it fits a valid exemption in the law, such as for review or parody.
States that either sponsor or ignore domestic terrorist organizations to the point of complicity, perhaps even engage in terrorist acts with national forces.
Terrorism would be roughly defined as 'engaging in violent acts against civilians without declaration of war by said state'.
technically it's infinitely small, but the important part is the event horizon, where the gravity is enough to prevent the escape of light.
For a BH massing a few grams, the EH is going to be smaller than an atom - so it's not exactly going to be sucking in much matter in the few nanoseconds or less it has before it evaporates.
It'd take something like the moon's mass to make a lasting BH.
People aren't plunking down $15.99 for CDs on a whim, even though they very well could. They can blame it on P2P if they like, but if they can't manage a half dozen or so impulse buys for the average consumer over the course of a year, they've got a serious marketing problem.
You know what I think is killing CD sales? Besides P2P? The movie aisle in Walmart and other stores. In most areas the movies are right next to the music.
As you walk down them you see all sorts of movies, from $5.50 to a high of around $25, except for things like collections or TV Seasons. Then they might be $30-50. But I can get bunches of movies for under $10.
Meanwhile, you have a hard time finding a CD for under $15. I can buy a 1.5-2 hour movie having video and sound track for that price. If I'm going to impulse buy, I'm more likely to impulse buy a movie than a CD.
As for 'magic pricing', I think $9.95 might be more magical than $11.35. It has to due with the whole 'under ten bucks' meme.
However, that doesn't mean it doesn't present a very serious danger if not properly contained.
Agreed. Then again, there are plenty of chemical dangers that are the same way. Tetnus, botulism, dimethylmercury, etc...
If a dirty bomb goes off almost everyone breathing within the blast area will develop lung cancer,
I'll dispute this. Do you have a reference? I think that it depends on what they use for a dirty bomb, how well dispursed it is, whether they can get it airborne in a form to lodge in the lungs, the individual exposures, etc...
and anyone who tries to live in the affected area will be all but guaranteed to develop some kind of cancer as well.
There are people still living next to Chernobyl. A number of people did get ill, a large number of children got thyroid cancer due to the I131 released. Cancer rates did increase, but we're talking about a relatively huge release.
We need to tone down the panic, a few more seconds in the area is less likely to cause you additional harm than risking being trampled. We can flush the radiation. We can clean up the area. It just takes some time.
It'd probably also have more material to begin with since a nuke uses very high purity stuff.
And a nuke is STILL generally quite a large affair. There is no 'briefcase' nuke, the smallest I've heard about is the size of a large & somewhat oddly shaped suitcase.
The biggest danger from a 'dirty bomb' remains the panic it would cause. More people would die from trampling than the radiation.
In which case, it hardly matters what nuclear material or how much as long as it gets our news people to yell 'It was a DIRTY BOMB!!!!', causing a panic.
I'll say that Fred has the right to say what he wants to say, just that people also have the right to not to listen to him. I swore an oath not to protect Fred but freedom of speech and our nation in general. I'll admit to having an occasional fantasy involving him and a high powered rifle. Then I think, he's not worth it.
IE if he wants, he can demonstrate on his own property, on public property available for that purpose, etc... If he can afford a radio station, he can spew all he likes. That's what I'll defend. Today you can't say 'I like puppies' without offending somebody. Freedom of speech protects speech that people find embarrassing, offensive, etc...
Doesn't mean that he has the right to disrupt other people's freedom of speech(IE the funeral he's interrupting).
As far as AM radio goes, I understand that there have been a number of liberal attempts to break into that broadcast medium. Most have failed. Besides, all you have to do to get away from, say Rush, is to change the dial or turn the radio off. What are you going to do to get away from Phelps? Leave your son's funeral?
There's being offensive, there's being controversial, then there's being a dick. Phelps is a dick.
You're mixing up data retention and media security. The fact that hard drives were destroyed is acceptable and understandable policy. The fact that the required records weren't kept in some form is the real problem.
By federal law, you're supposed to keep the data/records/emails/whatever...
By federal law, said data is supposed to be protected to whatever security level it needs. Sure, there's the freedom of information act (FOIA), but you also have a number of exceptions in there, up to and including 'Disclose only if you WANT to end up in PIA Federal prison or even shot'. There's 'For Official Use Only', privacy act, classified, etc...
I only have to deal with this stuff on the lowest levels, and I know it's hard to keep everything straight. Then you have separate computer systems to deal with political party stuff, which is going to happen due to the nature of our system of government and political processes.
From the sounds of it, they used RNC computers instead of government ones when they should have. Dinging the white house IT department for this isn't good. Heck, dinging Bush isn't necessarily a good idea. I've met some of the higher ups - and computer knowledge isn't their high point. Heck, I've heard that Bush doesn't do email or computer stuff. He has aids print things out.
There are plenty of things we can do today, it's just not cost-feasable to do it. We could put up high density storage tanks today; they'd just be too costly to be practical.
Don't forget that as a side effect of the DRM and the occasional secondary studio messup that the pirates often offer a superior product.
Pirate copy: Free except for the 5 min I spent looking it up Standard video: $5-30
Pirate copy: Open file. Maximize screen Standard video: Find disc, insert disc, wait for disc to load. Wait through FBI warning. Skip ads for movies that I either already own, or will never buy that have been out for years. Wait through non-skippable ad or that insulting 'Don't steal this video'. Finally play video
Pirate copy(software): Install, patch, run Standard copy: Install, enter DRM code. Hope. Patch. Update hardware, enter DRM code AGAIN.
I mean, I have a tendency to email copies of images on sites that try to prevent copying of images on websites to their webmaster when they do stupid stuff like disable the right click or have a flip-image of 'don't steal this image'. It pisses me off.
I buy movies, so many that I have a hard time sorting through them. Sure, most are $5 walmart specials, but eh. I haven't bought music often, but I don't download it either as I'm mostly satisfied with radio.
Blueray can hold more per disc than a HDDVD. I understand the picture quality is also somewhat better, but I can't say for sure, because we're well into the realm where the skill of the masterer matters more than the difference between the two.
Of course, I still don't own a HDTV or player yet.
My main impetus for changing to CFLs is not having to take apart the hall, kitchen, and bathroom fixtures all the time to replace the stupid $0.16 bulbs!
You speak truth. The first CFL purchase my parents made was for a light fixture over the stairs that required a ladder to replace - and not a small one, either.
As far as I know that bulb is still in there - and it's been more than 10 years.
LED lights are going to have to compete with all the other technologies - energy usage, light quality, longevity, cost, etc...
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I've seen tracked vehicles such as tanks with what look like rubber pads on the tracks to protect the roads.
Depending on how they're installed, I could see adding/removing them to be less than a minute per pad. Might take half an hour just because there's a lot of them.
Work the same odds for Australia and you will find they are about 1/10 the US number. An order of magnitude is a big difference regardless of how small the numbers are.
Agreed, but if you look at the evidence then you'll also find that our non-gun murder rate is still higher than Australia's, though it's been closing(US murder rate has been dropping faster than Australias).
Also, in many areas of the USA you're as safe or safer than Australia. Because of the independence of individual states and even cities in the USA, there's a broad variation between them. Consider that the places with the worst crime rates in the USA tend to be the ones with the most restrictive gun control laws. DC is close to the top of the list year after year, for example.
What if her response had been, "What are the odds I'll be able to retreive my gun, unlock it, load it, and successfully fend off a murderer/rapist?"
My response would be: Why are you storing a self defense weapon locked and unloaded?
If she, living alone, still wants it locked up, there are fast open safes available that you could store the loaded weapon in. Time into the safe is under 5 seconds with a little practice.
What percentage of people who have a gun are actually able to use it in these circumstances they imagine it will be so useful in? Any real statistics out there?
How about 764,000 by the lowest of 9 nationwide surveys? Considering a population of 300 million, figure about half of households have a gun, so 150 million, it's about half a percent per household per year. Minimum.
Again, what percentage of people who have a gun are involved in accidental / misuse / etc?
Same site, about 1400 fatal accidents total in 1995 from guns. You're 700 times more likely to defend yourself with your weapon than you are to accidentally kill yourself. On the misuse side, I'd include crimes & suicides, but studies have shown that substitution is strong with suicide(IE if unable to get a gun rather than not killing themselves they'll do it in a different way). As for crimes, that's what personal defense weapons are for, and just because you criminalize guns doesn't mean that you get them out of the criminals hands, and suddenly they have a force advantage.
In any case, I recently had a conversation with a pro-gun man. It was very civil, so no over the top rhetoric. When asked what he would do if his teenage child ever got pissed off at him, and in a fit of incredibly poor judgement takes the gun and shoots you with it. Then realizing what he's done, turns it on himself.
Very rare, in households with legitimate guns. More frequent in households with illegal guns(IE Felon in the house, stolen, gang, etc...). Most gun owners at least try to teach their children a greater amount of personal responsability. In addition, my grandfather started squirrel hunting, unsupervised, when he was 12.
Of course, around here I realized that you were echoing the earlier poster, so I'll simply finish with dog != gun.
Well, to be perfectly honest, assuming she's trained them well, 3 huge dogs will indeed result in an increase in safety at home at least as much as a gun. Crooks tend to be cowards, so going after a house with dogs is lower on the list than a house without dogs. Even if the dog is normally a creampuff, there's often a switch when their family expresses real fear. Even a lab that will normally let children ride on it and pull it's tail without attacking will often attack in such circumstances.
However, Dogs + Gun would be even safer, again, assuming a certain minimum level of training.
And the gun would quickly be cheaper. 3 huge dogs probably eat a couple hundred dollars of food a month, and that's not even going into vet bills and such. They're probably 'part of the family' though, so I won't go further.
On the other hand, I also live alone, but must travel for extended periods on occasion where I couldn't take a pet with me. I wouldn't put a pet through extended boarding, so I don't have a dog. I DO have a gun though.
It had nothing to do with the novels, the only thing it had going for it was casting, which was awesome, when I read the books I still picture Sting as Feyd, and Kyle MacLachlan as Paul. Though Patrick Steward as Gurney is a stretch, he was nominated as the sexiest man alive playing a character called "a wretched hump of a man" in the novel.
Same with me. I watch the movie while I was still a young teenager, it wasn't until years later that I found the book. I remember reading the book and going 'oh THAT was what was going on!'
Let's see, I remember the movie and the TV series. I'll have to find Children of Dune.
The movie I enjoyed, but had a number of parts I didn't understand until I read the book. The mini-series, having many more times the length, was MUCH better. Improved production values helped as well. On the whole, I prefer the series.
Given the scope of Herbert's books, it'll be interesting to see how well they can do being restricted to a 2hr or so format, rather than something that you'd need an old style intermission if you showed it in the theaters.
Interesting, though is there a way to preview music? I went to the site, all I can get is the promo page.
If what you say is true I'd be venturing off the beaten track. I hope the songs are indexed well. So far all my forays into non-radio music has been negative. I just don't like punk rock and such.
Besides, once you get a full time job you tend to value your time higher and your money lower. It also tends to make people appreciate the work put into making the music.
This.
I've been considering joining a pay music site with the announcements that at least some songs will be available without DRM restrictions.
The two I'm aware of are Apple iTunes and Amazon, at least for the major labels. If I sign up for one, it'll be on the basis of overall cost, selection, and convenience. Note: I don't own an iPod.
Anybody have experience with both that can make a recommendation?
Heat spreader != heat sink.
RDRAM produced it's heat unevenly, whereas SDRAM and it's DDX equivalents produce it much more evenly. This resulted in a case where a single chip or even portion of a chip could be producing the majority of the heat in the RDRAM. The metal was to spread the heat out for dissipation.
I'm not 100% up on the market, but the spreaders/sinks on many memory sticks today are more for marketing gimmicks than for performance purposes. They look neat, so they make it onto sticks indended for 'performance' markets and the window case & LED types. Well, you can also argue that they help prevent ESD damage.
Cheapo computers and ram don't have them because they're not really necessary, and can sometimes even reduce performance.
Yes, I know that the threat isn't the same as actually taking legal action, that's why I called it a scare tactic.
And for many of the letters I've seen evidence for, if it took them 20 minutes I'd be surprised. Many look almost like the form letters of old with open spaces to type in the relevant information via typewriter.
As for the $50k defense fund, I'd hit the RNC up, personally. They'd probably be willing to throw that much at it just to keep anything embarrasing out of the public eye, even if it'd only be embarrasing if taken out of context.
scratches head
Okay, We have price fixing to both increase the price of DDR SDRAM, and price fixing to kill RDRAM? They seem mutually exclusive to me.
From my memory, I think what killed RDRAM was that it cost substantially more than standard RAM, and benchmarking showed it was no better or worse on most tasks than SDRAM/DDR. Not to mention having uneven heat loads requiring heat spreaders to ensure you don't cook a portion of the memory chip.
Another point would be that Rambus killed itself by making licensing hard enough that you ended up with few enough manufacturers willing to go through the expense/effort that collusion was possible.
In any case, pretty easy to avoid Rambus memory products, too expensive and incompatible with the systems I like.
Might not be as easy as you think. SDRAM, for example, uses at least one patent held by Rambus. This, however, was known at the time and Rambus agreed to relatively light patent terms during the standard setting process. It still brings in millions though.
The issue here was Rambus, despite being a member of the standards body didn't disclose their patent as required by the terms to be part of the body, as a matter of fact using the meetings to further refine the patent to cover what the standards body was making part of the standard.
Then, once it was standard and widespread, pulled out the patent and started demanding excessive royalties.
I don't might the standard, disclosed patents. They did do work developing the processes covered by the patent. I object to the submarine patents.
And to be honest, lawyers send overreaching, unenforceable nastygrams all the time. Whether it's claiming copyright or trademark infringement where there is none, or it fits a valid exemption in the law, such as for review or parody.
It's a scare tactic.
Less different than you might think, I remember reading a link recently on Fark that had the UK passing the US for obesity rates.
States that either sponsor or ignore domestic terrorist organizations to the point of complicity, perhaps even engage in terrorist acts with national forces.
Terrorism would be roughly defined as 'engaging in violent acts against civilians without declaration of war by said state'.
technically it's infinitely small, but the important part is the event horizon, where the gravity is enough to prevent the escape of light.
For a BH massing a few grams, the EH is going to be smaller than an atom - so it's not exactly going to be sucking in much matter in the few nanoseconds or less it has before it evaporates.
It'd take something like the moon's mass to make a lasting BH.
People aren't plunking down $15.99 for CDs on a whim, even though they very well could. They can blame it on P2P if they like, but if they can't manage a half dozen or so impulse buys for the average consumer over the course of a year, they've got a serious marketing problem.
You know what I think is killing CD sales? Besides P2P? The movie aisle in Walmart and other stores. In most areas the movies are right next to the music.
As you walk down them you see all sorts of movies, from $5.50 to a high of around $25, except for things like collections or TV Seasons. Then they might be $30-50. But I can get bunches of movies for under $10.
Meanwhile, you have a hard time finding a CD for under $15. I can buy a 1.5-2 hour movie having video and sound track for that price. If I'm going to impulse buy, I'm more likely to impulse buy a movie than a CD.
As for 'magic pricing', I think $9.95 might be more magical than $11.35. It has to due with the whole 'under ten bucks' meme.
However, that doesn't mean it doesn't present a very serious danger if not properly contained.
Agreed. Then again, there are plenty of chemical dangers that are the same way. Tetnus, botulism, dimethylmercury, etc...
If a dirty bomb goes off almost everyone breathing within the blast area will develop lung cancer,
I'll dispute this. Do you have a reference? I think that it depends on what they use for a dirty bomb, how well dispursed it is, whether they can get it airborne in a form to lodge in the lungs, the individual exposures, etc...
and anyone who tries to live in the affected area will be all but guaranteed to develop some kind of cancer as well.
There are people still living next to Chernobyl. A number of people did get ill, a large number of children got thyroid cancer due to the I131 released. Cancer rates did increase, but we're talking about a relatively huge release.
We need to tone down the panic, a few more seconds in the area is less likely to cause you additional harm than risking being trampled. We can flush the radiation. We can clean up the area. It just takes some time.
It'd probably also have more material to begin with since a nuke uses very high purity stuff.
And a nuke is STILL generally quite a large affair. There is no 'briefcase' nuke, the smallest I've heard about is the size of a large & somewhat oddly shaped suitcase.
The biggest danger from a 'dirty bomb' remains the panic it would cause. More people would die from trampling than the radiation.
In which case, it hardly matters what nuclear material or how much as long as it gets our news people to yell 'It was a DIRTY BOMB!!!!', causing a panic.
I'll say that Fred has the right to say what he wants to say, just that people also have the right to not to listen to him. I swore an oath not to protect Fred but freedom of speech and our nation in general. I'll admit to having an occasional fantasy involving him and a high powered rifle. Then I think, he's not worth it.
IE if he wants, he can demonstrate on his own property, on public property available for that purpose, etc... If he can afford a radio station, he can spew all he likes. That's what I'll defend. Today you can't say 'I like puppies' without offending somebody. Freedom of speech protects speech that people find embarrassing, offensive, etc...
Doesn't mean that he has the right to disrupt other people's freedom of speech(IE the funeral he's interrupting).
As far as AM radio goes, I understand that there have been a number of liberal attempts to break into that broadcast medium. Most have failed. Besides, all you have to do to get away from, say Rush, is to change the dial or turn the radio off. What are you going to do to get away from Phelps? Leave your son's funeral?
There's being offensive, there's being controversial, then there's being a dick. Phelps is a dick.
You're mixing up data retention and media security. The fact that hard drives were destroyed is acceptable and understandable policy. The fact that the required records weren't kept in some form is the real problem.
By federal law, you're supposed to keep the data/records/emails/whatever...
By federal law, said data is supposed to be protected to whatever security level it needs. Sure, there's the freedom of information act (FOIA), but you also have a number of exceptions in there, up to and including 'Disclose only if you WANT to end up in PIA Federal prison or even shot'. There's 'For Official Use Only', privacy act, classified, etc...
I only have to deal with this stuff on the lowest levels, and I know it's hard to keep everything straight. Then you have separate computer systems to deal with political party stuff, which is going to happen due to the nature of our system of government and political processes.
From the sounds of it, they used RNC computers instead of government ones when they should have. Dinging the white house IT department for this isn't good. Heck, dinging Bush isn't necessarily a good idea. I've met some of the higher ups - and computer knowledge isn't their high point. Heck, I've heard that Bush doesn't do email or computer stuff. He has aids print things out.
You forgot the ever so important fourth:
Cost
There are plenty of things we can do today, it's just not cost-feasable to do it. We could put up high density storage tanks today; they'd just be too costly to be practical.
Don't forget that as a side effect of the DRM and the occasional secondary studio messup that the pirates often offer a superior product.
Pirate copy: Free except for the 5 min I spent looking it up
Standard video: $5-30
Pirate copy: Open file. Maximize screen
Standard video: Find disc, insert disc, wait for disc to load. Wait through FBI warning. Skip ads for movies that I either already own, or will never buy that have been out for years. Wait through non-skippable ad or that insulting 'Don't steal this video'. Finally play video
Pirate copy(software): Install, patch, run
Standard copy: Install, enter DRM code. Hope. Patch. Update hardware, enter DRM code AGAIN.
I mean, I have a tendency to email copies of images on sites that try to prevent copying of images on websites to their webmaster when they do stupid stuff like disable the right click or have a flip-image of 'don't steal this image'. It pisses me off.
I buy movies, so many that I have a hard time sorting through them. Sure, most are $5 walmart specials, but eh. I haven't bought music often, but I don't download it either as I'm mostly satisfied with radio.
And in this case the better specification won...
Blueray can hold more per disc than a HDDVD. I understand the picture quality is also somewhat better, but I can't say for sure, because we're well into the realm where the skill of the masterer matters more than the difference between the two.
Of course, I still don't own a HDTV or player yet.
My main impetus for changing to CFLs is not having to take apart the hall, kitchen, and bathroom fixtures all the time to replace the stupid $0.16 bulbs!
You speak truth. The first CFL purchase my parents made was for a light fixture over the stairs that required a ladder to replace - and not a small one, either.
As far as I know that bulb is still in there - and it's been more than 10 years.
LED lights are going to have to compete with all the other technologies - energy usage, light quality, longevity, cost, etc...