English not being the dominate net character set. The main character sets of the Indian, Chinese, and Russian languages being dominate in most net content and urls.
Just having most Chinese and Indians on the net. The governments quickly find that they don't need grand cultural firewalls. China and India making editing/expanding wikipedia a primary school class that students start in elementary school and have every year thereafter.
But this is a futile effort -- 40 years of being in the public domain is a bit much to reverse and cover up now. Why do so many people still think that you can rein this stuff in after it's already been so widely disseminated? Especially in the Internet era.
I don't think that it is. First think of all the crap on the internet. We've got porn, youtube, myspace, and slashdot. The main lookup tools most use are wikipedia and google. All that it would take is removing information from wikipedia and have google not bring up info in the subject area of interest and presto, you've hidden the information from 90% of the internet public.
The real test would be to try to take down detailed information about something that was widespread publicly known but not very important and see who puts the information backup and what type of information that they put up. Just because the information is in US colleges doesn't mean many US students have actually looked the information up. Sometimes I feel the safest place for our classified information is in any public high school library.
The problem i see here is that this is a small attack on our liberty from all sides. Imagine in the future the government makes some really asinine illegal, like burning an American flag. They make it a crime but to appease the people who want it to be legal they make it a tiny tiny offense, a slap on the wrist. What they don't make clear is that anyone who is wanted for this crime is probably going to be arrested on their way to work causing serious hardship.
Also view this police practice in light of the ridiculous war on drugs we have.
Um, don't blame the cops/police on the "war on drugs." Try to remember that they only enforce the rules, that they don't make the rules. Yes that's right its those that made the laws that created the war on drugs. Personally, I think that they should legalize the stuff just to tax it like they do tobacco and beer. If someone just explained to the law makers how much in lost money is going because of the war on drugs than we'd quickly see them change their tune. Illegal drugs and fighting illegal drugs are a multi billion dollar a year industry. Unlike the whole let's make beer illegal phase that we went through, most people don't do drugs so there isn't a big political push to make them legal again.
As to the fast scan of all cars that the vehicle passes, personally, I am trying to figure out why the ACLU is fighting that. For the life of me, I would think that it makes things safer since it allows police to drive and observe other issues rather than pay heavy attention to cars.
Um, I'm thinking many negative things about the ACLU on that point, but I'm not typing them... I actually looked into this for our police agency. There are 5-10 proven vendors that have products in the range of $25-30K for one unit. That was out of our price range. Generally what these things do is download the NCIC stolen vehicle database and also the local police departments warrants database and can scan 2-4 lanes of track easy in most weather. Generally, they don't do GPS because that'd be kinda stupid. What's the point of leaving a unit like that by the interstate just to count how many hits that you missed stopping? The real purpose of these things is to be paired with several patrol units that can stop and pickup all those hits. Look up the subject. There have been several departments that have demoed various systems of this type by just running a unit through either the Walmart parking lot or their local mall's park lot and were stunned by the number of vehicles that the system flags.
I don't know about you, but I can't wait for that tech to drop in price so it'd be affordable in every cop car. I didn't read the article, but there is no reason to use GPS and record any of the data. These systems just flag if the plate is a match for something in a database. After the car is stopped, the cop has to call back to the station to have the warrant pulled and/or double check. The thing is these systems makes cops more productive.
I won't object to it as long as I can recored the location and activities of the cops, and store that indefinitely
Um, that's already done in a lot of places. Well maybe not indefinitely, but for a good five years. My local small city has been working on it for awhile, and the only reason we've not purchased that yet is money. I'd think by the end of the decade that we will be tracking them all.
Hong Kong has the lowest bar to entry for any buisness. Lowest tax rates, pretty good consumer protection laws, etc. The average taxation rate is low. Like around 10% or less. Companies pay squat when it comes to taxes so extra BS fees don't go over well. Plus the place is extremely densly populated so coverage is easier. Did I mention 5 companies with startups coming along quite frequently? HK IMO has the best economy in the world, and they don't even manufacture anything.
You'd think one of our major cities would be able to copy that. What am I talking about we'd need a real new third party that actually wanted to slash government taxes and regulations.
I think that the feds need to make it a federal law that any mass "ID/SSN theft" needs to be reported to FBI with names, addresses, e-mail, and phone numbers of each person that had their ID/SSN stolen. The FBI should then be responsible for informing everyone in the list of theft and the status of the case and whatever legal mumbo jumbo that they need to tell 'em. Then the FBI should turn around and charge the business/state/local/federal department with a bill for contacting n numbers of people and also and bill for mandatory ID theft services charged to the business/state/local/federal department. So if it costs the FBI $.5 to contact 800,000 then would charge the agency $400,000 and then also how ever much the ID theft services costs, which is likely much greater than $.5. I'd think something like %10-20.
It's not these folks have to start really paying a large/huge dollar value and not just a negative public relations value that any business/state/local/federal department will really start taking this stuff seriously.
Now if you wanna see competition between cellular companies goto Hong Kong. $13 a month for what I pay in the US at $70 a month without the ability to call international most places you wanna call without extra crazy fees. No contracts required to boot (5 cellular companies).
Now if any of their cell phone companies would just try expanding over here. They'd own the US cell phone market in 90 days. In this day and age of multi/trans national companies, why aren't their international cell phone companies operating in Japan, Europe, and the US? If there are Hong Kong cell phone companies that can profit at $13 a month why don't the US large cities have the same prices? You'd think that our domestic market could sustain some competition.
The average American voter, when asked, guesses that about 15% of our budget goes to non-military foreign aid, and thinks it should be closer to 5%. In reality, it's 0.01% percent. Just, y'know, to put things in perspective.
And the average person would actually like it to be 0.0%.
Forget freaking sharks. I want something like this scaled down on top of my car aimed at birds that dare to poop at my car. I want anti-bird defensives that will fry 'em if they dare to do a fly by near my car.
However we much we may dislike what Harry Reid is doing, the claim about "Hollywood" and the Democrats is load of peanut butter. We need to get these reality-challenged conservative canards out of our public discussion; they certainly have no business of the front page of Slashdot.
Um, I don't think any one here actually had a clue what the funding sources where before you listed them. After seeing the results though, I'd say the statement stands though. Ok. It's not the main but in the middle of the top ten which I'd call a major funding source. One thing that I noticed is that each of the grouping above could be considered several different ways. If I were a Law Firm, Securities & Investment, or Retired that had interest in the TV/Movies/Music, I'd make sure my interests were lobbied across. The thing is the Law Firm, Securities & Investment, or Retired interest may or may not be inline with the TV/Movies/Music. Law Firm's may want long legal battles that all sides pay for. Securities & Investment would want the TV/Movies/Music that they have money in to still be profitable. Retired folks may not object therefore giving the TV/Movies/Music little inside party opposition if someone wants to support the TV/Movies/Music platform.
Bit torrent clients cache IP addresses so that they can connect to all the seeds/leeches in case the torrent managing host goes down. All this has proven is that the US Government uses Bit torrent.
No, it proves some folks in the government use bit torrent. Odds are for the same things everyone else uses it for.
Free speech is too important. It needs to be protected and the Supreme Court isn't doing an adequate job (see the McCain-Feingold decision).
Hey, we have Free Speech. The problem like always, is that any one that hears your free speech that doesn't agree with it, will take offense and sometimes take action against you or the group that you support. The Supreme Court shouldn't be trying to mandate or control the actions of others that aren't illegal.
If I hear your campus side speech and think that your crazy crackpots, I have several options, mostly I ignore you and go about my business, sometimes I ask a bicycle cop if they could tell you to be quite. (I don't mind you talking, but I don't want you shouting while I'm walking by.) If you are a political crack pot that I feel has a good shot at brain washing the masses around me to your side, I might become a political crack pot the next day trying to win converts to my political point of view.
The only thing that I'm really not allowed to do is physical assault or threatening you. If I own the property that you are being a crackpot on, I'd simply call the police and ban you from the premises, then if you come back I'd have you arrested for trespassing. On a college campus, generally a bicycle cop will ask to see your student ID if you are making a disturbance and if you don't have one then will ask you to leave. If you don't leave, then they can do things along the same lines.
If I were rich and owned a newspaper, radio station, or tv station, I'd have it understood that nothing said from my belongs would be against me, my family, or my interests. If you disagreed with that, then I'd tell you to buy your own newspaper, radio station, or tv station. What makes us civilized is the means that we use to shut others that we don't like up.
Definition of "friend":
* Web 2.0: Someone who recognizes your name and is willing to click a mouse button.
* Reality: Someone who will help you move.
* Fiction: Someone who will help you move the body.
I want something that's a cross between a telephone book and a year book for my town. Actually, I want to be able to click on a web page and see everyone employed in my building and their name, their position and their picture are all I'd want. I see the same people day in and day out; I have no freaking clue what 90-95% of their names are. You know what I miss most about school? Roll call with the teacher calling out everyone's name. I never knew that I'd miss that until I realized after college is that they really don't introduce you around in the business/government world and just assume that you'll make your own friends.
School doesn't teach you how to build "friendships" or social networks. It happens, but it's more of an accidental thing rather than something that they encourage or actually teach.
Someone who will help you move. For me, that's family. For my wife, that's anyone in her church, her bunco group, family, or anyone that she can draft. My wife gets drafted to assist others to move as well. Sometimes I think that she's on a "help me move" mailing list.
Fiction: Someone who will help you move the body. I don't have any of those types of "friends." I don't have any bodies that need burying either though so it's all good.
I feel sorry for those guys. I mean o.k. they get paid slightly over min. wage to rummage through others pieces of crap computers in an attempt to fix it. I've always assumed crap like this was their one job perk. Heck, Best Busy should just add some fine print into the Geek Squad's manifesto that says that basically yes they can and will do this at their will.
Before I work on a friend's or family member's computer, I make sure that they are aware that by default I'll be copying any porn, mp3s, warez, or anything else on their computer that I find interesting. If that doesn't scare them off, generally they don't have anything I'll find interesting on their computer anyway. I'd never let another slashdotter "fix" my computer. I do have a lot of files that slashdotters would find interesting.
Ethics? Since when does anyone around here believe any institution has a set of ethics? Individuals may have ethics, but entity's like corporations, governments, and schools don't. I can believe that any given slashdotter may have a set of ethics, but I don't believe that slashdot has any ethics.
In the same way that monkeys randomly banging on keyboards don't produce fine works of literature, people messing around with simple machines whose fundamentals have been understood for hundreds of years don't suddenly revolutionize physics.
Of course, both are technically possible, but you'd be a shitty gambler if you bet on those odds.
Depends on your bank roll, how much it costs to support your millions of R&D monkeys, and if they ever actually produce nuggets worth millions/billions/trillions. There are scientists out there that hate the experimenters. They want it all solved out in theory before they go ahead with anything. If you do have the theory worked out, it is much cheaper when you do start to experiment, but if you have enough money and resources you can just have a heck of lot of folks out there experimenting until someone hits a breakthrough. Those breakthroughs by their nature are more expensive though.
Then there was the Great Oil Sniffer Hoax. An Italian guy named Bonassoli approaches Elf with a device he claims is a gravity wave oil detector. Ends up fleecing them for about $150 MILLION before they finally catch on. Disappears with most of the money soon after.
Damn, smart Italian guy. I'd love to have the income off a very large finite money machine such as that!
Well, really it just refers to a machine that runs forever without energy input, which implies either nonconservation of energy, or some sort of process with no losses to friction or other effects that runs forever on inertia. The latter would be just as interesting in many ways, and certainly also violates the laws of physics, but it's not really the same thing.
I never really gave it much thought before but I hope we as a species start working on building an actual perpetual motion device. Why? Because the universe may have a limited life span and be running down without additional external energy input. So some really long range research needs to be done so in a couple of billion years, we'd find a way to extend the life of the universe. That's much, much more important than merely powering our toys on one single planet. We can easily power all our toys by many different means, but how the heck do we power the universe? I guess we could steal energy from other universes if they exist and we become able to tap them for our energy needs.
Personally, if I were an alien and I came across a planet like this, I'd stick a huge visible-from-earth goatse billboard out past the moon and leave. The effort it would take earth to pull that kind of an insult out of the sky might actually cause us to grow up a bit.
Um, you forget how many would start to worship the sign as the truth that god exists, and he isn't happy with us! Any attempt to remove or closely examine the sign would bring the religious out for their war on you.
Those that aren't members of that religion and really do think that it's insulting will not look up any more.
Unless they employed eugenics at some point in their history, there's no guarantee that even an advanced society doesn't have "normal" people. That's something that always pissed me off about Star Trek (even as a fan): everyone was a super-genius, unless you dedicated yourself to raising grapes in France or you were a junior member of an away team.;-)
Have you ever read any Ian Banks Culture books? In that one, there isn't any money and genie like computers will give everyone in their society what they ask for. O.k. They've got a population in the trillions easy where most people just have fun and play games. Raising grapes would be having fun in that society. Now the Culture doesn't have a military. They do have Contact that is the group of individuals interested in contacting other species and fiddling with other societies. (They don't have the a silly prime directive.) I don't have any idea on actual stats or what not, but think out of the trillions in the Culture only a million or two apply to Contact. They generally do have entry tests, but if the only thing they can think of is to place you as a red shirt extra well that's where you'll be. What are the odds that those Contact folks (even the red shirts) look like geniuses to the rest of the galaxy esp the little planets like ours that don't have space drive and most of the Culture's tech does look like magic from where we are sitting. The same concept would apply to Star Trek except the population numbers are much smaller.
It's not really rational. The US has this deeply embedded association of mandatory, national ID cards with Hitler or Stalin.
Um, I don't even think that's it. It's more of the religious angle. Yes, that whole the anti-Christ will embed a tracking device into everyone and bring a one world government to the world just before the end of the world thing. Every time I tell my religious friends that the government doesn't need to embed any tracking device in you, just to read all those unquie IDs that God/evolution put there, they really go bonkers. They insist that's not the same, that some entity will embed some tracking device into people and DLs, SSNs, and UPCs are a first step. (Yeap you read that right they include UPCs as evil tracking devices.) That Hitler/Stalin used ID cards is just a bonus for them in their debates. Oh, they use that as reason, but it's only one of many. Then you have the Slashdot crowd that automatically hates anything to do with tracking of people/things. I think that has more to do with disliking their mom's knowing where they are at and their mom's knowing exactly where their porn is stashed than too much against just the government. Fear of little old ladies monitoring our behavior is much stronger than fear of the goverment trying and failing at monitoring our behavior.
We already have lists of people that aren't allowed to drive. Basically though, you need a DL to drive. If you don't have a DL, you get put into NCIC for driving without a license and jailed/fined accordingly. You don't see many 12-14 year olds driving around do you?
You think Mexican immigration is bad now? Wait until 2015. I wouldn't be surprised if the USgov set up a 100 yard free fire zone on the southern border, or, they simply let everyone in, and drive the wages in the US down to Mexican levels.
We could have a national vote on annexing Mexico as a US state. The only reason they aren't already a part of the US is because we were extreme bigots/racists and anti-Catholic the last time we thought about it. Oh, yes, we can moan and whine all day long about Mexico pushing illegals onto us, but the only way to slow/stop it is to push that southern border father south. We could always bring back manifest density (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_Destiny). Nope we can't because that's why we didn't expand down into Mexico in the first place.
Mexico is not a poor nation, it's rich in natural resources, good farmland, two oceans, a willing labor force, etc, it's just run like crap by 200 wealthy families and a pseudo elected government that is really just part of organized crime and the class warfare schism perpetuated by the elite there.
I just had the evil thought of how is that really different from the US? The US is controlled by wealthy families. All our elected governments from city on up are pseudo. Come on each town/city has its own private group of families that have been controlling it for as long as the natives can remember. We have maybe 20K wealthy families of various wealth levels controlling the US and also parts of global trade. Oh, the elite has always arranged things so that their kids can become or stay in the elite. That's how life works. It doesn't matter if your government is dictatorship, democracy, republics, or communism; the families that actually run things will always try to arrange it so that their family members have the edge in their government system.
Slashdot Mirror
English not being the dominate net character set. The main character sets of the Indian, Chinese, and Russian languages being dominate in most net content and urls.
Just having most Chinese and Indians on the net. The governments quickly find that they don't need grand cultural firewalls. China and India making editing/expanding wikipedia a primary school class that students start in elementary school and have every year thereafter.
Vacuum tubes = costly = takes up large space = less green = it's about time
Hey, if it's not broke yet, we ain't fixing it yet.
But this is a futile effort -- 40 years of being in the public domain is a bit much to reverse and cover up now. Why do so many people still think that you can rein this stuff in after it's already been so widely disseminated? Especially in the Internet era.
I don't think that it is. First think of all the crap on the internet. We've got porn, youtube, myspace, and slashdot. The main lookup tools most use are wikipedia and google. All that it would take is removing information from wikipedia and have google not bring up info in the subject area of interest and presto, you've hidden the information from 90% of the internet public.
The real test would be to try to take down detailed information about something that was widespread publicly known but not very important and see who puts the information backup and what type of information that they put up. Just because the information is in US colleges doesn't mean many US students have actually looked the information up. Sometimes I feel the safest place for our classified information is in any public high school library.
The problem i see here is that this is a small attack on our liberty from all sides. Imagine in the future the government makes some really asinine illegal, like burning an American flag. They make it a crime but to appease the people who want it to be legal they make it a tiny tiny offense, a slap on the wrist. What they don't make clear is that anyone who is wanted for this crime is probably going to be arrested on their way to work causing serious hardship.
Also view this police practice in light of the ridiculous war on drugs we have.
Um, don't blame the cops/police on the "war on drugs." Try to remember that they only enforce the rules, that they don't make the rules. Yes that's right its those that made the laws that created the war on drugs. Personally, I think that they should legalize the stuff just to tax it like they do tobacco and beer. If someone just explained to the law makers how much in lost money is going because of the war on drugs than we'd quickly see them change their tune. Illegal drugs and fighting illegal drugs are a multi billion dollar a year industry. Unlike the whole let's make beer illegal phase that we went through, most people don't do drugs so there isn't a big political push to make them legal again.
As to the fast scan of all cars that the vehicle passes, personally, I am trying to figure out why the ACLU is fighting that. For the life of me, I would think that it makes things safer since it allows police to drive and observe other issues rather than pay heavy attention to cars.
Um, I'm thinking many negative things about the ACLU on that point, but I'm not typing them... I actually looked into this for our police agency. There are 5-10 proven vendors that have products in the range of $25-30K for one unit. That was out of our price range. Generally what these things do is download the NCIC stolen vehicle database and also the local police departments warrants database and can scan 2-4 lanes of track easy in most weather. Generally, they don't do GPS because that'd be kinda stupid. What's the point of leaving a unit like that by the interstate just to count how many hits that you missed stopping? The real purpose of these things is to be paired with several patrol units that can stop and pickup all those hits. Look up the subject. There have been several departments that have demoed various systems of this type by just running a unit through either the Walmart parking lot or their local mall's park lot and were stunned by the number of vehicles that the system flags.
I don't know about you, but I can't wait for that tech to drop in price so it'd be affordable in every cop car. I didn't read the article, but there is no reason to use GPS and record any of the data. These systems just flag if the plate is a match for something in a database. After the car is stopped, the cop has to call back to the station to have the warrant pulled and/or double check. The thing is these systems makes cops more productive.
I won't object to it as long as I can recored the location and activities of the cops, and store that indefinitely
Um, that's already done in a lot of places. Well maybe not indefinitely, but for a good five years. My local small city has been working on it for awhile, and the only reason we've not purchased that yet is money. I'd think by the end of the decade that we will be tracking them all.
Hong Kong has the lowest bar to entry for any buisness. Lowest tax rates, pretty good consumer protection laws, etc. The average taxation rate is low. Like around 10% or less. Companies pay squat when it comes to taxes so extra BS fees don't go over well. Plus the place is extremely densly populated so coverage is easier. Did I mention 5 companies with startups coming along quite frequently? HK IMO has the best economy in the world, and they don't even manufacture anything.
You'd think one of our major cities would be able to copy that. What am I talking about we'd need a real new third party that actually wanted to slash government taxes and regulations.
I think that the feds need to make it a federal law that any mass "ID/SSN theft" needs to be reported to FBI with names, addresses, e-mail, and phone numbers of each person that had their ID/SSN stolen. The FBI should then be responsible for informing everyone in the list of theft and the status of the case and whatever legal mumbo jumbo that they need to tell 'em. Then the FBI should turn around and charge the business/state/local/federal department with a bill for contacting n numbers of people and also and bill for mandatory ID theft services charged to the business/state/local/federal department. So if it costs the FBI $.5 to contact 800,000 then would charge the agency $400,000 and then also how ever much the ID theft services costs, which is likely much greater than $.5. I'd think something like %10-20.
It's not these folks have to start really paying a large/huge dollar value and not just a negative public relations value that any business/state/local/federal department will really start taking this stuff seriously.
Now if you wanna see competition between cellular companies goto Hong Kong. $13 a month for what I pay in the US at $70 a month without the ability to call international most places you wanna call without extra crazy fees. No contracts required to boot (5 cellular companies).
Now if any of their cell phone companies would just try expanding over here. They'd own the US cell phone market in 90 days. In this day and age of multi/trans national companies, why aren't their international cell phone companies operating in Japan, Europe, and the US? If there are Hong Kong cell phone companies that can profit at $13 a month why don't the US large cities have the same prices? You'd think that our domestic market could sustain some competition.
The average American voter, when asked, guesses that about 15% of our budget goes to non-military foreign aid, and thinks it should be closer to 5%. In reality, it's 0.01% percent. Just, y'know, to put things in perspective.
And the average person would actually like it to be 0.0%.
Forget freaking sharks. I want something like this scaled down on top of my car aimed at birds that dare to poop at my car. I want anti-bird defensives that will fry 'em if they dare to do a fly by near my car.
However we much we may dislike what Harry Reid is doing, the claim about "Hollywood" and the Democrats is load of peanut butter. We need to get these reality-challenged conservative canards out of our public discussion; they certainly have no business of the front page of Slashdot.
Um, I don't think any one here actually had a clue what the funding sources where before you listed them. After seeing the results though, I'd say the statement stands though. Ok. It's not the main but in the middle of the top ten which I'd call a major funding source. One thing that I noticed is that each of the grouping above could be considered several different ways. If I were a Law Firm, Securities & Investment, or Retired that had interest in the TV/Movies/Music, I'd make sure my interests were lobbied across. The thing is the Law Firm, Securities & Investment, or Retired interest may or may not be inline with the TV/Movies/Music. Law Firm's may want long legal battles that all sides pay for. Securities & Investment would want the TV/Movies/Music that they have money in to still be profitable. Retired folks may not object therefore giving the TV/Movies/Music little inside party opposition if someone wants to support the TV/Movies/Music platform.
Bit torrent clients cache IP addresses so that they can connect to all the seeds/leeches in case the torrent managing host goes down. All this has proven is that the US Government uses Bit torrent.
No, it proves some folks in the government use bit torrent. Odds are for the same things everyone else uses it for.
Free speech is too important. It needs to be protected and the Supreme Court isn't doing an adequate job (see the McCain-Feingold decision).
Hey, we have Free Speech. The problem like always, is that any one that hears your free speech that doesn't agree with it, will take offense and sometimes take action against you or the group that you support. The Supreme Court shouldn't be trying to mandate or control the actions of others that aren't illegal.
If I hear your campus side speech and think that your crazy crackpots, I have several options, mostly I ignore you and go about my business, sometimes I ask a bicycle cop if they could tell you to be quite. (I don't mind you talking, but I don't want you shouting while I'm walking by.) If you are a political crack pot that I feel has a good shot at brain washing the masses around me to your side, I might become a political crack pot the next day trying to win converts to my political point of view.
The only thing that I'm really not allowed to do is physical assault or threatening you. If I own the property that you are being a crackpot on, I'd simply call the police and ban you from the premises, then if you come back I'd have you arrested for trespassing. On a college campus, generally a bicycle cop will ask to see your student ID if you are making a disturbance and if you don't have one then will ask you to leave. If you don't leave, then they can do things along the same lines.
If I were rich and owned a newspaper, radio station, or tv station, I'd have it understood that nothing said from my belongs would be against me, my family, or my interests. If you disagreed with that, then I'd tell you to buy your own newspaper, radio station, or tv station. What makes us civilized is the means that we use to shut others that we don't like up.
Definition of "friend":
* Web 2.0: Someone who recognizes your name and is willing to click a mouse button.
* Reality: Someone who will help you move.
* Fiction: Someone who will help you move the body.
I want something that's a cross between a telephone book and a year book for my town. Actually, I want to be able to click on a web page and see everyone employed in my building and their name, their position and their picture are all I'd want. I see the same people day in and day out; I have no freaking clue what 90-95% of their names are. You know what I miss most about school? Roll call with the teacher calling out everyone's name. I never knew that I'd miss that until I realized after college is that they really don't introduce you around in the business/government world and just assume that you'll make your own friends.
School doesn't teach you how to build "friendships" or social networks. It happens, but it's more of an accidental thing rather than something that they encourage or actually teach.
Someone who will help you move.
For me, that's family. For my wife, that's anyone in her church, her bunco group, family, or anyone that she can draft. My wife gets drafted to assist others to move as well. Sometimes I think that she's on a "help me move" mailing list.
Fiction: Someone who will help you move the body.
I don't have any of those types of "friends." I don't have any bodies that need burying either though so it's all good.
I feel sorry for those guys. I mean o.k. they get paid slightly over min. wage to rummage through others pieces of crap computers in an attempt to fix it. I've always assumed crap like this was their one job perk. Heck, Best Busy should just add some fine print into the Geek Squad's manifesto that says that basically yes they can and will do this at their will.
Before I work on a friend's or family member's computer, I make sure that they are aware that by default I'll be copying any porn, mp3s, warez, or anything else on their computer that I find interesting. If that doesn't scare them off, generally they don't have anything I'll find interesting on their computer anyway. I'd never let another slashdotter "fix" my computer. I do have a lot of files that slashdotters would find interesting.
Ethics? Since when does anyone around here believe any institution has a set of ethics? Individuals may have ethics, but entity's like corporations, governments, and schools don't. I can believe that any given slashdotter may have a set of ethics, but I don't believe that slashdot has any ethics.
In the same way that monkeys randomly banging on keyboards don't produce fine works of literature, people messing around with simple machines whose fundamentals have been understood for hundreds of years don't suddenly revolutionize physics.
Of course, both are technically possible, but you'd be a shitty gambler if you bet on those odds.
Depends on your bank roll, how much it costs to support your millions of R&D monkeys, and if they ever actually produce nuggets worth millions/billions/trillions. There are scientists out there that hate the experimenters. They want it all solved out in theory before they go ahead with anything. If you do have the theory worked out, it is much cheaper when you do start to experiment, but if you have enough money and resources you can just have a heck of lot of folks out there experimenting until someone hits a breakthrough. Those breakthroughs by their nature are more expensive though.
Then there was the Great Oil Sniffer Hoax. An Italian guy named Bonassoli approaches Elf with a device he claims is a gravity wave oil detector. Ends up fleecing them for about $150 MILLION before they finally catch on. Disappears with most of the money soon after.
Damn, smart Italian guy. I'd love to have the income off a very large finite money machine such as that!
Well, really it just refers to a machine that runs forever without energy input, which implies either nonconservation of energy, or some sort of process with no losses to friction or other effects that runs forever on inertia. The latter would be just as interesting in many ways, and certainly also violates the laws of physics, but it's not really the same thing.
I never really gave it much thought before but I hope we as a species start working on building an actual perpetual motion device. Why? Because the universe may have a limited life span and be running down without additional external energy input. So some really long range research needs to be done so in a couple of billion years, we'd find a way to extend the life of the universe. That's much, much more important than merely powering our toys on one single planet. We can easily power all our toys by many different means, but how the heck do we power the universe? I guess we could steal energy from other universes if they exist and we become able to tap them for our energy needs.
Personally, if I were an alien and I came across a planet like this, I'd stick a huge visible-from-earth goatse billboard out past the moon and leave. The effort it would take earth to pull that kind of an insult out of the sky might actually cause us to grow up a bit.
Um, you forget how many would start to worship the sign as the truth that god exists, and he isn't happy with us! Any attempt to remove or closely examine the sign would bring the religious out for their war on you.
Those that aren't members of that religion and really do think that it's insulting will not look up any more.
Unless they employed eugenics at some point in their history, there's no guarantee that even an advanced society doesn't have "normal" people. That's something that always pissed me off about Star Trek (even as a fan): everyone was a super-genius, unless you dedicated yourself to raising grapes in France or you were a junior member of an away team. ;-)
Have you ever read any Ian Banks Culture books? In that one, there isn't any money and genie like computers will give everyone in their society what they ask for. O.k. They've got a population in the trillions easy where most people just have fun and play games. Raising grapes would be having fun in that society. Now the Culture doesn't have a military. They do have Contact that is the group of individuals interested in contacting other species and fiddling with other societies. (They don't have the a silly prime directive.) I don't have any idea on actual stats or what not, but think out of the trillions in the Culture only a million or two apply to Contact. They generally do have entry tests, but if the only thing they can think of is to place you as a red shirt extra well that's where you'll be. What are the odds that those Contact folks (even the red shirts) look like geniuses to the rest of the galaxy esp the little planets like ours that don't have space drive and most of the Culture's tech does look like magic from where we are sitting. The same concept would apply to Star Trek except the population numbers are much smaller.
It's not really rational. The US has this deeply embedded association of mandatory, national ID cards with Hitler or Stalin.
Um, I don't even think that's it. It's more of the religious angle. Yes, that whole the anti-Christ will embed a tracking device into everyone and bring a one world government to the world just before the end of the world thing. Every time I tell my religious friends that the government doesn't need to embed any tracking device in you, just to read all those unquie IDs that God/evolution put there, they really go bonkers. They insist that's not the same, that some entity will embed some tracking device into people and DLs, SSNs, and UPCs are a first step. (Yeap you read that right they include UPCs as evil tracking devices.) That Hitler/Stalin used ID cards is just a bonus for them in their debates. Oh, they use that as reason, but it's only one of many. Then you have the Slashdot crowd that automatically hates anything to do with tracking of people/things. I think that has more to do with disliking their mom's knowing where they are at and their mom's knowing exactly where their porn is stashed than too much against just the government. Fear of little old ladies monitoring our behavior is much stronger than fear of the goverment trying and failing at monitoring our behavior.
Around then you'll have a "no drive" list.
We already have lists of people that aren't allowed to drive. Basically though, you need a DL to drive. If you don't have a DL, you get put into NCIC for driving without a license and jailed/fined accordingly. You don't see many 12-14 year olds driving around do you?
You think Mexican immigration is bad now? Wait until 2015. I wouldn't be surprised if the USgov set up a 100 yard free fire zone on the southern border, or, they simply let everyone in, and drive the wages in the US down to Mexican levels.
We could have a national vote on annexing Mexico as a US state. The only reason they aren't already a part of the US is because we were extreme bigots/racists and anti-Catholic the last time we thought about it. Oh, yes, we can moan and whine all day long about Mexico pushing illegals onto us, but the only way to slow/stop it is to push that southern border father south. We could always bring back manifest density (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_Destiny). Nope we can't because that's why we didn't expand down into Mexico in the first place.
Mexico is not a poor nation, it's rich in natural resources, good farmland, two oceans, a willing labor force, etc, it's just run like crap by 200 wealthy families and a pseudo elected government that is really just part of organized crime and the class warfare schism perpetuated by the elite there.
I just had the evil thought of how is that really different from the US? The US is controlled by wealthy families. All our elected governments from city on up are pseudo. Come on each town/city has its own private group of families that have been controlling it for as long as the natives can remember. We have maybe 20K wealthy families of various wealth levels controlling the US and also parts of global trade. Oh, the elite has always arranged things so that their kids can become or stay in the elite. That's how life works. It doesn't matter if your government is dictatorship, democracy, republics, or communism; the families that actually run things will always try to arrange it so that their family members have the edge in their government system.