Because the rick-and-nutter vote may be tied up at the election, but they seriously matter in the primaries. A republican candidate needs to have some degree of hick-and-nutter appeal, or they'll never get to be the candidate. The party leadership also knows that the social conservatives are very powerful for local organisation and get-out-the-vote efforts, so it's not enough to just have them voting to keep the democrats out. The trick for the republicans is to find a way to whip the social conservatives up into a frenzy of support without also alienating the moderates.
If it came down to it, so you think any president would want to send the army to fight against people who were US citizens until only a few months ago? Only if there is no other way would they consider it. First they'd try to call in every favor they had to block it, and then they'd spend years on some form of treaty that allowed the state nominal independence without leaving the union entirely.
Depends how it's done. A friendly secession - possible if president and a majority of both houses have no serious objections, rather unlikely - could easily include a common-market treaty, something like the EEC. Combined with an open borders policy and mutual document recognition in the same treaty, there wouldn't be much economic impact.
Not this one. Look at the user history - too elaborate to be worth the effort of faking. What I mean is the obvious: Doubt anyone you find on the internet.
I did, yes. As for the meaning, if you ignore the spelling error, I believe my usage is accurate. My understanding is that it refers to a person who advocates for an entity with which they are in some manner associated, but without disclosing that association? In this case I was raising the possibility that a comment like that shows characteristics of one of the many people paid by the Chinese government to post in their defense on the internet.
I doubt it really was though. A slashdot user with a rich history like DevTecha would just take too much effort to fake. If it was an AC, then I'd be much more suspicious.
I know it's cliche to call 'shrill' around here, but... it is no secret that the Chinese government employs an army of propagandists, mostly part-timers, with the job of patroling the internet looking for Chinese blogs and discussion forums and defending the government from criticism. I am not aware if they extend the program to English-language sites, but if they do, the above post is exactly what I would expect them to post. Some of those lines, like 'This includes abiding Chinese laws if you want to do business there,' are straight out of the government policy and perfectly echo previous statements by officials on such matters.
1 also doesn't work because a lot of patents now are so broad they can't be worked around. Often so broad they'd get thrown out in court, after you'd spend a few hundred thousand dollars in legal fees.
The basic PC architecture goes back to the IBM PC of 1981, long enough ago for those patents to have expired. What you're looking at now will be patents covering individual hardware components - hard drive head designs, chip layout techniques, that sort of thing. I imagine there are more than a few trivial ones in there too, but as you're only assembling components made by someone else into an unpatented design you're safe there. If you wanted to build your own harddrive or motherboard, then you'd be in trouble. You're only protected from patent problems because other, richer companies are taking care of it.
Software-wise, though... forget it, if you're in the US or somewhere else that recognises software patents. It's impossible. There are just too many - remember that Microsoft even holds a patent on storing long and short form filenames in one filesystem. Your only hope is to license an OS from someone else, who will then assume the liability - and in practice, that means Microsoft.
If the grid had been designed for it, it'd not be difficult to stick a big 'emergency power' socket at substations so a generator truck can just patch in safely. But that would require planning for disasters years in advance, and someone would have to pay for it.
I'd worry more about the prospect for expansion. Law aside, this means that ISPs have to have a filtering system in place - somewhere, there must be a configurable lists of forbidden sites or servers, and the routers must be capable of comparing against it. Once it's established that blocking a site is just a matter of updating a list, it becomes much easier for either future acts or just judges to order that sites be blocked for other crimes - like copyright infringement, or libel, or whatever Australia's version of hate speech is.
Even then, it comes down to 'You have these rights, but only if your hackers are better than our engineers.' While in practice all significently-deployed DRM schemes have been broken, it often takes many months, and even then may require substantial skill on the part of the end user to, for example, solder a chip into a console. It's very bad legal practice to have any kind of consumer right that can only be exercised by first winning a battle of skill with an engineer.
Try telling that to the anti-euthanasia or pro-life crowds. They don't care about the brain: To them, humans are magical because God breathed soul-stuff into them.
So, the only reason it's still possible for anyone not blessed by the manufacturer to work on the engine is that some hackers have manage to break through the security? If you're a hobbyist, that'll work, even if it is inconvenient. But how is that supposed to operate in a business? I somehow imagine that a garage might find it hard to get business or liability insurance if word gets out that they are using uncertified tools of unknowable origin obtained from semi-underground forums in order to service engines.
I imagine a reference to a source of persistant grumbling from car people. Modern car engines are heavily computerised, and not in an open manner: The computers are sealed, often embedded in epoxy, and their only means of control is via propritary communications protocols which are understood only by the official manufacturer's diagnostic unit - a device that they may or may not make available to independant mechanics, and will charge a fortune for if they do. Without this unit it's impossible to access data needed for diagnostics or to adject even simple paramaters like ignition timeing. Essentially, if the engine needs repairing, you need to go back to the authorised dealer and pay whatever they demand.
Only if you're doing FP-intensive calculations, though. Heavy floating point math is actually quite rare outside of science and engineering, and even then I imagine that a substantial part of the processor time is spent on non-floating-point parts of the algorithm.
You seem to be assuming tax money all disappears into a financial black hole. Government may be often inefficient, but it does provide many useful services even so. Like giving me the ability to leave my home and be fairly confident someone isn't going to shoot me in the back to steal my wallet.
They don't need to do something so fancy. It's easy: The government just has to accept taxes in US$ only. Thus everyone will need US$, all wages will be in US$... you think Bitcoin is the first attempt to establish an alternative currency? Bitcoin will thus exist, but only as a niche currency used only by criminals and paranoids.
An Evil Hacker or goverment could use a more old-fashioned technique. MITM attacks on the addresses themselves, which are usually sent via unencrypted HTTP. If Evil Hacker or government controls a proxy or the network - and it isn't hard to set up a public access point with something like this - a simple regex could replace bitcoin addresses with the hackers own. So the public goes to, say, savethefluffykittens.org to donate to a worthy cause - but the bitcoin address they actually see is modified by their malicious access point, or hacked company web-filter. Everything looks in order, they copy-paste the address to the client, and as far as they can tell they just gave money to a worthy cause. Except they didn't: The BC just went into the hacker's wallet.
To take an example, the first that comes to mind is Mr Creflow Dollar. He's a televangalist, and a successful one. He lives in a giant mansion, with all the trappings of the super-rich lifestyle. Flies on private jets, sports cars, that sort of things. Yet Mr Dollar himself is actually not rich at all. The mansion, jets and cars are all owned by his ministry - which, as a church, is tax exempt. If you went to a purely income-tax system, you'd see an expansion of that trick beyond just religion: Ever company CEO would have the company own their house, and make it one of the benefits that comes with their position.
Accountants, I hear, call it being 'tax efficient.'
Combine with facial recognition and it'd be very useful data for advert targetting. You could extend the internet method to the real world: As people walk past a store, the e-paper signs in the window automatically change to show products most likely to appeal to the extract crowd of that moment. Recomputing every time the composition changes significently, on a moment-by-moment basis. In turn the cameras note who stops to read the signs, and further incorporate this into the targetting profiles.
The database gets leaked. Ten years later, when you apply for work, the employer contacts their candidate screening agency. They search their profile you, and discovered that you once a sizeable number of politically-incorrect books to a friend. You are flagged as a potential source of workplace hostility, and don't get the job.
The document isn't absolute - it specifies that exceptions may be made where there is a 'clear business need.' I suspect that might include things like 'half the population still uses internet explorer, and it won't play anything except h.264.'
Slashdot Mirror
Because the rick-and-nutter vote may be tied up at the election, but they seriously matter in the primaries. A republican candidate needs to have some degree of hick-and-nutter appeal, or they'll never get to be the candidate. The party leadership also knows that the social conservatives are very powerful for local organisation and get-out-the-vote efforts, so it's not enough to just have them voting to keep the democrats out. The trick for the republicans is to find a way to whip the social conservatives up into a frenzy of support without also alienating the moderates.
The choice is between clean air and poverty or smog and riches. They chose the latter. So did China.
Once. Not much of a history.
If it came down to it, so you think any president would want to send the army to fight against people who were US citizens until only a few months ago? Only if there is no other way would they consider it. First they'd try to call in every favor they had to block it, and then they'd spend years on some form of treaty that allowed the state nominal independence without leaving the union entirely.
Depends how it's done. A friendly secession - possible if president and a majority of both houses have no serious objections, rather unlikely - could easily include a common-market treaty, something like the EEC. Combined with an open borders policy and mutual document recognition in the same treaty, there wouldn't be much economic impact.
Not this one. Look at the user history - too elaborate to be worth the effort of faking. What I mean is the obvious: Doubt anyone you find on the internet.
I did, yes. As for the meaning, if you ignore the spelling error, I believe my usage is accurate. My understanding is that it refers to a person who advocates for an entity with which they are in some manner associated, but without disclosing that association? In this case I was raising the possibility that a comment like that shows characteristics of one of the many people paid by the Chinese government to post in their defense on the internet.
I doubt it really was though. A slashdot user with a rich history like DevTecha would just take too much effort to fake. If it was an AC, then I'd be much more suspicious.
I know it's cliche to call 'shrill' around here, but... it is no secret that the Chinese government employs an army of propagandists, mostly part-timers, with the job of patroling the internet looking for Chinese blogs and discussion forums and defending the government from criticism. I am not aware if they extend the program to English-language sites, but if they do, the above post is exactly what I would expect them to post. Some of those lines, like 'This includes abiding Chinese laws if you want to do business there,' are straight out of the government policy and perfectly echo previous statements by officials on such matters.
There's long been a bit of an argument over which is smarter: The Parrots, or the Corvids. Naturally, I support the latter team.
1 also doesn't work because a lot of patents now are so broad they can't be worked around. Often so broad they'd get thrown out in court, after you'd spend a few hundred thousand dollars in legal fees.
The basic PC architecture goes back to the IBM PC of 1981, long enough ago for those patents to have expired. What you're looking at now will be patents covering individual hardware components - hard drive head designs, chip layout techniques, that sort of thing. I imagine there are more than a few trivial ones in there too, but as you're only assembling components made by someone else into an unpatented design you're safe there. If you wanted to build your own harddrive or motherboard, then you'd be in trouble. You're only protected from patent problems because other, richer companies are taking care of it.
Software-wise, though... forget it, if you're in the US or somewhere else that recognises software patents. It's impossible. There are just too many - remember that Microsoft even holds a patent on storing long and short form filenames in one filesystem. Your only hope is to license an OS from someone else, who will then assume the liability - and in practice, that means Microsoft.
If the grid had been designed for it, it'd not be difficult to stick a big 'emergency power' socket at substations so a generator truck can just patch in safely. But that would require planning for disasters years in advance, and someone would have to pay for it.
I'd worry more about the prospect for expansion. Law aside, this means that ISPs have to have a filtering system in place - somewhere, there must be a configurable lists of forbidden sites or servers, and the routers must be capable of comparing against it. Once it's established that blocking a site is just a matter of updating a list, it becomes much easier for either future acts or just judges to order that sites be blocked for other crimes - like copyright infringement, or libel, or whatever Australia's version of hate speech is.
Even then, it comes down to 'You have these rights, but only if your hackers are better than our engineers.' While in practice all significently-deployed DRM schemes have been broken, it often takes many months, and even then may require substantial skill on the part of the end user to, for example, solder a chip into a console. It's very bad legal practice to have any kind of consumer right that can only be exercised by first winning a battle of skill with an engineer.
Does that include iTunes, though? Because it's all one ecosystem.
"Your brain makes you human."
Try telling that to the anti-euthanasia or pro-life crowds. They don't care about the brain: To them, humans are magical because God breathed soul-stuff into them.
So, the only reason it's still possible for anyone not blessed by the manufacturer to work on the engine is that some hackers have manage to break through the security? If you're a hobbyist, that'll work, even if it is inconvenient. But how is that supposed to operate in a business? I somehow imagine that a garage might find it hard to get business or liability insurance if word gets out that they are using uncertified tools of unknowable origin obtained from semi-underground forums in order to service engines.
I imagine a reference to a source of persistant grumbling from car people. Modern car engines are heavily computerised, and not in an open manner: The computers are sealed, often embedded in epoxy, and their only means of control is via propritary communications protocols which are understood only by the official manufacturer's diagnostic unit - a device that they may or may not make available to independant mechanics, and will charge a fortune for if they do. Without this unit it's impossible to access data needed for diagnostics or to adject even simple paramaters like ignition timeing. Essentially, if the engine needs repairing, you need to go back to the authorised dealer and pay whatever they demand.
Only if you're doing FP-intensive calculations, though. Heavy floating point math is actually quite rare outside of science and engineering, and even then I imagine that a substantial part of the processor time is spent on non-floating-point parts of the algorithm.
You seem to be assuming tax money all disappears into a financial black hole. Government may be often inefficient, but it does provide many useful services even so. Like giving me the ability to leave my home and be fairly confident someone isn't going to shoot me in the back to steal my wallet.
They don't need to do something so fancy. It's easy: The government just has to accept taxes in US$ only. Thus everyone will need US$, all wages will be in US$... you think Bitcoin is the first attempt to establish an alternative currency? Bitcoin will thus exist, but only as a niche currency used only by criminals and paranoids.
An Evil Hacker or goverment could use a more old-fashioned technique. MITM attacks on the addresses themselves, which are usually sent via unencrypted HTTP. If Evil Hacker or government controls a proxy or the network - and it isn't hard to set up a public access point with something like this - a simple regex could replace bitcoin addresses with the hackers own. So the public goes to, say, savethefluffykittens.org to donate to a worthy cause - but the bitcoin address they actually see is modified by their malicious access point, or hacked company web-filter. Everything looks in order, they copy-paste the address to the client, and as far as they can tell they just gave money to a worthy cause. Except they didn't: The BC just went into the hacker's wallet.
What personal income?
To take an example, the first that comes to mind is Mr Creflow Dollar. He's a televangalist, and a successful one. He lives in a giant mansion, with all the trappings of the super-rich lifestyle. Flies on private jets, sports cars, that sort of things. Yet Mr Dollar himself is actually not rich at all. The mansion, jets and cars are all owned by his ministry - which, as a church, is tax exempt. If you went to a purely income-tax system, you'd see an expansion of that trick beyond just religion: Ever company CEO would have the company own their house, and make it one of the benefits that comes with their position.
Accountants, I hear, call it being 'tax efficient.'
Combine with facial recognition and it'd be very useful data for advert targetting. You could extend the internet method to the real world: As people walk past a store, the e-paper signs in the window automatically change to show products most likely to appeal to the extract crowd of that moment. Recomputing every time the composition changes significently, on a moment-by-moment basis. In turn the cameras note who stops to read the signs, and further incorporate this into the targetting profiles.
The database gets leaked. Ten years later, when you apply for work, the employer contacts their candidate screening agency. They search their profile you, and discovered that you once a sizeable number of politically-incorrect books to a friend. You are flagged as a potential source of workplace hostility, and don't get the job.
The document isn't absolute - it specifies that exceptions may be made where there is a 'clear business need.' I suspect that might include things like 'half the population still uses internet explorer, and it won't play anything except h.264.'