Finally, RealID is indeed a disaster for 4th amendment rights, the right to assemble, states' rights, and protection from private data warehousing. There is no reason for the US federal gov't to track the movements of citizens, or Constitutional power to assert a national identity system.
Unless they've snuck in some GPS/long range RFID thing in there, the last time I took a look at "RealID" it was about "standardizing" all the states DLs so that if you have a NY DL and you get pulled over in TX that the TX cop could easily verify that yes that's a real NY DL and use some scanner to read the information off the card into their report writing software so that they wouldn't have to enter your name if they wrote you a ticket.
That doesn't have anything to do with "right to assemble" or "protection from private data warehousing" whatever that's supposed to be. I missed that one where was it in the Bill of Rights again? The thing is yes it's against "states rights", but it's actually one of the things that the Feds should be doing instead of the states any way. They aren't tracking your movement. It's more along the lines of if they don't have a clue who you are and don't know if you are a US citizen or an illegal Canadian or UK immigrant trying to sneak into the US that they could run you through the system and check. They aren't going to running entire malls or cities through the system though after the Virgina Tech thing there are people that would like the ability to lock down an entire city to look for one criminal.
They (and I include myself in this camp) want our immigration laws enforced, but want it enforced in ways that don't impose upon and potentially make criminals out of many legitimate citizens who don't want to be forced to carry around "papers" all the time, or have to show them to any official on command. People want our immigration law enforced at our borders, with possible incursions 'inland' to attempt to remedy (by which I mean, deport) people who are known to be here illegally.
That's not really possible. Well yes it is, and I'll describe how you can go about it without having to have papers on you. First "every" and I do mean every legit, legal person would need to be scanned into some massive database with finger prints, foots prints, retina scans, DNA, Name, photos, and other ID info. You then setup a system in the hospitals that every new born is registered into the system at birth. Every police officer and/or government offical would need a fingerprint/ID scanner to scan you to determine who you are. There you don't have to carry papers any more. If any one is picked up and found not in the system, then automatically they are an illegal alien and need to be deported to parts unknown.
I didn't say you'd like the solution. The thing is that police/government folks have no idea who is actually a US citizen unless you have a government ID somewhat verifying you.
Don't bother enforcing it. Just use sorting it out as a prison sentence. Use prison labor at the dump to sort it all out. Sounds like a messy annoying, but o.k. punishment and a "needed" job that someone would have had to do.
There were 2 types of classes in college. Those that handed us out notes and went through a slide show and had us fill in some blanks and those that handed out nothing and wrote on the blackboard.
You forget those stupid classes where they just write 1-5 words on the whiteboard and never ever use it again for the rest of the lecture. I liked classes with notes because it was easy to read what that professor whated. College was all about reading professors so you knew exactly what bs each professor wanted about their subject. A class with notes or slides was much easier than a classes with rabbling profressors that jumped all over the place. But lets be honest, there where good and terrible professors. Half the work of college was making sure that you avoided the terrible ones.
The next big technological advance will be something where you don't notice the technology. It will just spread until you wonder to yourself "I wonder what ever happened to cable television/flat tires/floppy disks?".
This makes me think of kitchen gadets. O.k. everyone needs a dishwasher, stove/oven, refrigerator, and micowave, but then what else do you need? A wok, blender, toaster, coffee maker? Don't get me started on all those spoons and other sticks with odd shaped ends. (Oh and a good potato peeler.) None of those were world changing to us, but those that we actually use do make us happier.
What I want some one to build is fly zapper and a bird zapper. I want a laser to detect any flying things in my house and burn them rather than my wife or I having to manually kill gnats or flys. I'd also love a version that tracks and kills birds that dare to poop on my car.
We have several people who've bought new laptops in the past few months, and every one of them is infuriated at how annoying the interface is. I certainly couldn't train a computer novice to use it yet, because it makes no real sense where anything is or under what conditions entire sections of the interface are hidden and revealed.
Um, what were you trying to teach them? I've assisted a guy with memory problems with Vista. His XP computer went out and our local stores just had Vista computers so that's what he picked up. I really wanted to stick with XP since that was what he was used to. I'm sorry, but Vista is just as easy to use as XP for the users that never go past what is on the desktop.
I had to turn off some splash screens and apps that wanted to pop up, but after getting that crap under wrap, the guy had an easier time using the Vista computer than the XP computer. I was annoyed at a few things that I ran into in the control panel, but he shouldn't really run into them. If I had $720 laying around, I'd have run out and bought one myself.
I don't get it. You don't trust banks, but you trust the Federal Reserve ? The people who can and do print money like it grows on trees and in cotton fields ?
Shh, I prefer never to really think about what physical assest is behind our currency... because its just belief/faith that has been backing it for decades. This is an interesting subject to look into, but it's really scary if you actually "think about it."
your trust priorities are a little confused if you think that a bank is more likely to screw you then a university.
Hey, give the guy a break, it's obvious he is a freshman, or he'd already know this.
Banks are where my family has always keep our money. They are great for having a paper trail. Without that paper trail from a bank or credit card or some large entity, anyone can say you didn't pay it and try to make you pay it again and again. That doesn't really happen much with things like Walmart or McDonalds. But when you get into the real world, you don't want the electric company, your landlord, or other utilities or house or car payment to be double charging you for anything. Those bills are much larger.
I'm sorry any thing that is a couple of hundred I'd want something more than a single reciept. I'm paranoid that way. Having a bank or credit card company behind you when you really need it can be a great plus. Be paranoid about actually having to pay interest for credit card purchases and their hidden pitfalls. If you know what they are good for, they make great tools.
You are right, it just cannot be done with the current tech. Muscle atrophy, deossification, drop in hemoglobin count, things like that... Reproduction is out of the question in space, too, since the embryos are usually severely disfigured in zero G (hence sex is a big no-no up there).
Well, we actually have had the basic space tech for awhile on how large a proper space station should be to give you 1g by spinning it. That's not the problem. The problem is that it would be expensive to build the thing. Smaller isn't really better in space because you can't spin a small space station without making the people inside really sick.
If we had a decent launch capability, nobody would be spending that long up there. Things like this happen because of launch delays, not because anybody is supposed to spend that long on a mission.
The record is held by Valeriy Polyakov, who spent 431 days on Mir. He had the unfortunate experience of being up while the USSR was coming apart.
If we had decent space stations, then there wouldn't be a need for them to ever come back down, and we'd have people living their entire lives up there.
Reality is, we are treating women equal to men when they are judged by the same criteria. The day that I see a story on the/. front page that a woman holds the *overall* record for time in space is the day I will start believing that humanity has come to terms with equality between the sexes.
I wouldn't even really be excited by that. I'd be excited by not even really knowing/caring about it. What's the freaking deal about the gender of a record holder? I know that's one of the first thing we do to group ourselves. We seperate ourselves by age, sex, race, and other traits. I don't really care what physical traits that a recorder holder may have other than those that lead them to be the record holder of said comptetion. I don't even care about the longest time in space or what ever. Why I can spend $1-2K and spend a weekend in space, then I'll care about it. Until then, space per se really doesn't matter to me.;)
If you were in a small village in Greece where you had to walk everywhere by foot, the next village over would be a long way away. The village four villages over would be a tremendous distance. A whole country over would be a gigantic distance, and going to France, for example, would be way out of your league. Traveling to eastern Asia, the Americas, or Australia would look like a pipe dream.
Well, we've got a long time to get there. And we've got a lot of little steps on the road to galactic civilization, including permanent space stations, profitable manufacturing, colonization of nearby planets, colonization of planets further our in the solar system, etc. 100 years to galactic expansion is ridiculous... after 100 years, we'd be lucky if we've got a buzzing little colony on the moon, let alone Mars or other solar systems.
I like this one. I think that we will mainly be staying out of space until we bring some of those scifi nanotech dreams into real life. When we can launch some probes at asteroids and in 10-20 years that asteroid is converted to a space station/factory or even space ship by nanotech then we will really start thinking about leaving the solar system. I'd bet even if we were only playing around in our own solar system, if we had a self sustaining space industry we'd have a percentage just head out every few years. I could see us sending out thousands of STL 1/10,000th light speed craft out to every near solar system that looked promising. The trips would take thouands of years, but they'd get there sooner or later. The thing is even they'd know tech advances would make that STL get closer and closer to lightspeed until someone actually figured a way to cheat around it. You don't need FTL to do colonization. You only need one government with much better space tech than we do. Heck, said government could just send off all their prisoners/felonies to be exiled for colonization instead of bothering with prisons. There has been alot of scifi written about various ways for getting folks to actually get out of the home system.
I'll take a true believer that I disagree with on some substantive issues over someone that can't decide if they are for or against something until they see the polls.
I'll take the poll switchers over the true believers any day.
The canadate should have 4 choices: yes no refuse to answer leave
But it must be exactly on of those, nothing else.
Um, that wouldn't be very good no one would ever show up for a "debate" if they only allowed 4 canned answers. A debate should be a bit more indepth than yes, no, i don't know, or I don't really have a position on that subject.
I'm saying that Dell and HP stand to gain if laws like this are passed, because they are huge corporations and can achieve massive economies of scale that the little guys can't match. (Dell is particularly good at shaving costs down -- they have made it into an art form.)
Um, that sounds silly. Of course corporations can use economy of scale to bring the price down! Of course, I could start a home business in my bedroom that doesn't mean that I should magically start off equal with mega corp. You have to do this thing call work and growth and then get those tiny home businesses to be actual small businesses before you can even dream of competing with mega corp on economy of scale.
Economy of scale and other things that bring the price down are good for the end consumer. It's hard to compete being the little guy against that, but that doesn't mean the government should tax those really cheap products from the big boys until their price is the same as those small businesses. That'd be insane.
Just studying addictive personalities however is not as sensational or politically expedient as the more sensational avenue of linking games to violence and anti-social behavior. I'm sure a researcher can get more money by studying the latter.
Well you can get addicted to nearly any thing. Let's see there is sex, work, beer, partying, socializing, religion, information, TV, reading, maybe radio, live bands, food, wasting time, gambling, getting various "highs" or "rushes", being the leader of a group, driving, talking on phones or cell phones, gossiping, education, government/ruling, slashdot, linux, open source, and/or power/money.
Name an activity and see if you can think of people being addicted to it. There are folks addicted to everything.
Or Does that translate as "We're going to review privacy policy" which is bush talk for "We're going to remove any of your rights to privacy under the name of virginia tech and anyone who complaigns is helping the murderers. Just a thought.
I know I'm being very pessimistic, but it's necessary with this goverment, they removed my rights to be anything else.
I just figured that they were going to start treating all 19-25 year olds that attend college like elementary students/prisoners. Oh they aren't removing anyone's actual rights per se. They'll just make things like Pell Grants dependent on the student actually living on campus and at the same time monitoring on campus resident students 24x7 and trying to fit them all into the same moral code. How, by making various scholarships have "moral" as well as "GPA" requirements that if you don't follow it, then you lose it or requiring GPS trackers for you scholarship requirments.
As far as I know nobody has formally specified the 'win' outcome for the war -- so I'm a bit doubtful that anyone has worked out an EXACT 26% (not 25%! That number would sound like a guess! But 26% sounds like SCIENCE!) chance of the US side achieving it.
I thought it was understood that we win when they ask to become the next US state.;)
In July the law is changing over here, so that people producing biodiesel for their own use (and less than some ridiculously huge amount, like 2500 litres) will be exempt from paying fuel duty on it.
Breaking stupid laws works, people. The sooner the US population wakes up to this idea, the better.
No, no, no! Having stupid laws changed, modified, or exemptions put in works. Breaking stupid laws puts yourself at risk of the police or IRS coming after you for breaking the law!
If it was for road usage, why aren't cyclists also charged?
Shh, tech. cyclists should be charged. If you speak up, all the bikes in your state will have to have GPS tracker on it so you can pay a road mileage tax to the various local governments come tax time.
The sad thing is, I fully expect to see many misguided Slashdotters stand up for the state here and defend this ridiculous fine.
Um, we don't have nanotech or robots buidiing roads at near zero cost. Roads cost lots of money to build and keep up. I and most others are actually in favor of the government coming down on this guy for not paying road taxes.
Are you in favor of people skipping out on the taxes that they don't like, but they keep using the services that you and others paid the taxes for? I have no problem with this guy fueling up on his on. He better look at the cost of buying land and building all his own roads to drive on if he doesn't want to pay any road taxes.
What if it's solar-powered, will they tax the Sun?
It doesn't matter if it is fusion powered, zero point energy, or any other energy source. It matters that the government has to build and keep up roads. If we all had some magic fuel source cars that came from the factory fueled for 1 million miles, we'd still some how have to pay taxes to the local/state governments that are have to build the roads. If we all had nuclear powered cars, we'd end up having to have the D.O.T. stick a GPS Tax monitor on all our vehicles just so we'd know where to send all the tax money to. Or we could just have all public roads become instant toll roads.
The real tragedy, of course, isn't that he has died, but that (according to wikipedia) his programs are no longer broadcast anywhere. I haven't seen television in a while, so its possible that there's even better science programming available today. But, somehow, I doubt it.
This is sad. I've seen alot of junk on tv. There are several stations that should be running these shows. TLC, Discovery, SciFi Channel, and any PBS channel. There have been fancier wizbang shows, but none of them captured the attention or delivered the knowledge of Mr. Wizard. I'm going to have to buy these DVDs if only to give them to my kids as birthday or christmas presents. This is one gift idea that I think most slashdotters should try. I've got all of B5 and Robotech on DVD; I should have Mr. Wizards World as well!
I think the cops are in the right on this one. Why? The cops are only enforcing the law. The law basically says that no one can record conversations of others except police during police interviews. Why is thie a good thing? Think little. If you had the right to record conversations of others, then you would. You and other slashdotters aren't the problem. It's that if you have the right, then companies would have that right. (See where I'm heading with this.)
If companies were allowed to record converstations, then places like walmart, target, and gas stations would add audio recordings to their video tape survillance. Right now, it wouldn't be useful, but I could see "them" actually developing the tech to convert audio converstations into easily searchable text. (Heck, you might even be ID'd by your voice.) Would you want a world where every converstation that you had was recorded by whomever owned that building? You go to the gas station, and its recorded, you go to a Walmart type store and all your converstations are recorded, you go to any government building and every converstation that you have is recorded.
The law sounds like it was trying to prevent that which is a good thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Finally, RealID is indeed a disaster for 4th amendment rights, the right to assemble, states' rights, and protection from private data warehousing. There is no reason for the US federal gov't to track the movements of citizens, or Constitutional power to assert a national identity system.
Unless they've snuck in some GPS/long range RFID thing in there, the last time I took a look at "RealID" it was about "standardizing" all the states DLs so that if you have a NY DL and you get pulled over in TX that the TX cop could easily verify that yes that's a real NY DL and use some scanner to read the information off the card into their report writing software so that they wouldn't have to enter your name if they wrote you a ticket.
That doesn't have anything to do with "right to assemble" or "protection from private data warehousing" whatever that's supposed to be. I missed that one where was it in the Bill of Rights again? The thing is yes it's against "states rights", but it's actually one of the things that the Feds should be doing instead of the states any way. They aren't tracking your movement. It's more along the lines of if they don't have a clue who you are and don't know if you are a US citizen or an illegal Canadian or UK immigrant trying to sneak into the US that they could run you through the system and check. They aren't going to running entire malls or cities through the system though after the Virgina Tech thing there are people that would like the ability to lock down an entire city to look for one criminal.
They (and I include myself in this camp) want our immigration laws enforced, but want it enforced in ways that don't impose upon and potentially make criminals out of many legitimate citizens who don't want to be forced to carry around "papers" all the time, or have to show them to any official on command. People want our immigration law enforced at our borders, with possible incursions 'inland' to attempt to remedy (by which I mean, deport) people who are known to be here illegally.
That's not really possible. Well yes it is, and I'll describe how you can go about it without having to have papers on you. First "every" and I do mean every legit, legal person would need to be scanned into some massive database with finger prints, foots prints, retina scans, DNA, Name, photos, and other ID info. You then setup a system in the hospitals that every new born is registered into the system at birth. Every police officer and/or government offical would need a fingerprint/ID scanner to scan you to determine who you are. There you don't have to carry papers any more. If any one is picked up and found not in the system, then automatically they are an illegal alien and need to be deported to parts unknown.
I didn't say you'd like the solution. The thing is that police/government folks have no idea who is actually a US citizen unless you have a government ID somewhat verifying you.
True, but how is it enforced?
Don't bother enforcing it. Just use sorting it out as a prison sentence. Use prison labor at the dump to sort it all out. Sounds like a messy annoying, but o.k. punishment and a "needed" job that someone would have had to do.
There were 2 types of classes in college. Those that handed us out notes and went through a slide show and had us fill in some blanks and those that handed out nothing and wrote on the blackboard.
You forget those stupid classes where they just write 1-5 words on the whiteboard and never ever use it again for the rest of the lecture. I liked classes with notes because it was easy to read what that professor whated. College was all about reading professors so you knew exactly what bs each professor wanted about their subject. A class with notes or slides was much easier than a classes with rabbling profressors that jumped all over the place. But lets be honest, there where good and terrible professors. Half the work of college was making sure that you avoided the terrible ones.
The next big technological advance will be something where you don't notice the technology. It will just spread until you wonder to yourself "I wonder what ever happened to cable television/flat tires/floppy disks?".
This makes me think of kitchen gadets. O.k. everyone needs a dishwasher, stove/oven, refrigerator, and micowave, but then what else do you need? A wok, blender, toaster, coffee maker? Don't get me started on all those spoons and other sticks with odd shaped ends. (Oh and a good potato peeler.) None of those were world changing to us, but those that we actually use do make us happier.
What I want some one to build is fly zapper and a bird zapper. I want a laser to detect any flying things in my house and burn them rather than my wife or I having to manually kill gnats or flys. I'd also love a version that tracks and kills birds that dare to poop on my car.
We have several people who've bought new laptops in the past few months, and every one of them is infuriated at how annoying the interface is. I certainly couldn't train a computer novice to use it yet, because it makes no real sense where anything is or under what conditions entire sections of the interface are hidden and revealed.
Um, what were you trying to teach them? I've assisted a guy with memory problems with Vista. His XP computer went out and our local stores just had Vista computers so that's what he picked up. I really wanted to stick with XP since that was what he was used to. I'm sorry, but Vista is just as easy to use as XP for the users that never go past what is on the desktop.
I had to turn off some splash screens and apps that wanted to pop up, but after getting that crap under wrap, the guy had an easier time using the Vista computer than the XP computer. I was annoyed at a few things that I ran into in the control panel, but he shouldn't really run into them. If I had $720 laying around, I'd have run out and bought one myself.
I don't get it. You don't trust banks, but you trust the Federal Reserve ? The people who can and do print money like it grows on trees and in cotton fields ?
Shh, I prefer never to really think about what physical assest is behind our currency... because its just belief/faith that has been backing it for decades. This is an interesting subject to look into, but it's really scary if you actually "think about it."
your trust priorities are a little confused if you think that a bank is more likely to screw you then a university.
Hey, give the guy a break, it's obvious he is a freshman, or he'd already know this.
Banks are where my family has always keep our money. They are great for having a paper trail. Without that paper trail from a bank or credit card or some large entity, anyone can say you didn't pay it and try to make you pay it again and again. That doesn't really happen much with things like Walmart or McDonalds. But when you get into the real world, you don't want the electric company, your landlord, or other utilities or house or car payment to be double charging you for anything. Those bills are much larger.
I'm sorry any thing that is a couple of hundred I'd want something more than a single reciept. I'm paranoid that way. Having a bank or credit card company behind you when you really need it can be a great plus. Be paranoid about actually having to pay interest for credit card purchases and their hidden pitfalls. If you know what they are good for, they make great tools.
You are right, it just cannot be done with the current tech. Muscle atrophy, deossification, drop in hemoglobin count, things like that...
Reproduction is out of the question in space, too, since the embryos are usually severely disfigured in zero G (hence sex is a big no-no up there).
Well, we actually have had the basic space tech for awhile on how large a proper space station should be to give you 1g by spinning it. That's not the problem. The problem is that it would be expensive to build the thing. Smaller isn't really better in space because you can't spin a small space station without making the people inside really sick.
Am I the only one that was wondering why Plan 9 Pulishing (http://www.plan9.org/) would need to be run on Blue Gene?
If we had a decent launch capability, nobody would be spending that long up there. Things like this happen because of launch delays, not because anybody is supposed to spend that long on a mission.
The record is held by Valeriy Polyakov, who spent 431 days on Mir. He had the unfortunate experience of being up while the USSR was coming apart.
If we had decent space stations, then there wouldn't be a need for them to ever come back down, and we'd have people living their entire lives up there.
Reality is, we are treating women equal to men when they are judged by the same criteria. The day that I see a story on the /. front page that a woman holds the *overall* record for time in space is the day I will start believing that humanity has come to terms with equality between the sexes.
;)
I wouldn't even really be excited by that. I'd be excited by not even really knowing/caring about it. What's the freaking deal about the gender of a record holder? I know that's one of the first thing we do to group ourselves. We seperate ourselves by age, sex, race, and other traits. I don't really care what physical traits that a recorder holder may have other than those that lead them to be the record holder of said comptetion. I don't even care about the longest time in space or what ever. Why I can spend $1-2K and spend a weekend in space, then I'll care about it. Until then, space per se really doesn't matter to me.
If you were in a small village in Greece where you had to walk everywhere by foot, the next village over would be a long way away. The village four villages over would be a tremendous distance. A whole country over would be a gigantic distance, and going to France, for example, would be way out of your league. Traveling to eastern Asia, the Americas, or Australia would look like a pipe dream.
Well, we've got a long time to get there. And we've got a lot of little steps on the road to galactic civilization, including permanent space stations, profitable manufacturing, colonization of nearby planets, colonization of planets further our in the solar system, etc. 100 years to galactic expansion is ridiculous... after 100 years, we'd be lucky if we've got a buzzing little colony on the moon, let alone Mars or other solar systems.
I like this one. I think that we will mainly be staying out of space until we bring some of those scifi nanotech dreams into real life. When we can launch some probes at asteroids and in 10-20 years that asteroid is converted to a space station/factory or even space ship by nanotech then we will really start thinking about leaving the solar system. I'd bet even if we were only playing around in our own solar system, if we had a self sustaining space industry we'd have a percentage just head out every few years. I could see us sending out thousands of STL 1/10,000th light speed craft out to every near solar system that looked promising. The trips would take thouands of years, but they'd get there sooner or later. The thing is even they'd know tech advances would make that STL get closer and closer to lightspeed until someone actually figured a way to cheat around it. You don't need FTL to do colonization. You only need one government with much better space tech than we do. Heck, said government could just send off all their prisoners/felonies to be exiled for colonization instead of bothering with prisons. There has been alot of scifi written about various ways for getting folks to actually get out of the home system.
I'll take a true believer that I disagree with on some substantive issues over someone that can't decide if they are for or against something until they see the polls.
I'll take the poll switchers over the true believers any day.
The canadate should have 4 choices:
yes
no
refuse to answer
leave
But it must be exactly on of those, nothing else.
Um, that wouldn't be very good no one would ever show up for a "debate" if they only allowed 4 canned answers. A debate should be a bit more indepth than yes, no, i don't know, or I don't really have a position on that subject.
I'm saying that Dell and HP stand to gain if laws like this are passed, because they are huge corporations and can achieve massive economies of scale that the little guys can't match. (Dell is particularly good at shaving costs down -- they have made it into an art form.)
Um, that sounds silly. Of course corporations can use economy of scale to bring the price down! Of course, I could start a home business in my bedroom that doesn't mean that I should magically start off equal with mega corp. You have to do this thing call work and growth and then get those tiny home businesses to be actual small businesses before you can even dream of competing with mega corp on economy of scale.
Economy of scale and other things that bring the price down are good for the end consumer. It's hard to compete being the little guy against that, but that doesn't mean the government should tax those really cheap products from the big boys until their price is the same as those small businesses. That'd be insane.
Just studying addictive personalities however is not as sensational or politically expedient as the more sensational avenue of linking games to violence and anti-social behavior. I'm sure a researcher can get more money by studying the latter.
Well you can get addicted to nearly any thing. Let's see there is sex, work, beer, partying, socializing, religion, information, TV, reading, maybe radio, live bands, food, wasting time, gambling, getting various "highs" or "rushes", being the leader of a group, driving, talking on phones or cell phones, gossiping, education, government/ruling, slashdot, linux, open source, and/or power/money.
Name an activity and see if you can think of people being addicted to it. There are folks addicted to everything.
Or Does that translate as "We're going to review privacy policy" which is bush talk for "We're going to remove any of your rights to privacy under the name of virginia tech and anyone who complaigns is helping the murderers. Just a thought.
I know I'm being very pessimistic, but it's necessary with this goverment, they removed my rights to be anything else.
I just figured that they were going to start treating all 19-25 year olds that attend college like elementary students/prisoners. Oh they aren't removing anyone's actual rights per se. They'll just make things like Pell Grants dependent on the student actually living on campus and at the same time monitoring on campus resident students 24x7 and trying to fit them all into the same moral code. How, by making various scholarships have "moral" as well as "GPA" requirements that if you don't follow it, then you lose it or requiring GPS trackers for you scholarship requirments.
As far as I know nobody has formally specified the 'win' outcome for the war -- so I'm a bit doubtful that anyone has worked out an EXACT 26% (not 25%! That number would sound like a guess! But 26% sounds like SCIENCE!) chance of the US side achieving it.
;)
I thought it was understood that we win when they ask to become the next US state.
In July the law is changing over here, so that people producing biodiesel for their own use (and less than some ridiculously huge amount, like 2500 litres) will be exempt from paying fuel duty on it.
Breaking stupid laws works, people. The sooner the US population wakes up to this idea, the better.
No, no, no! Having stupid laws changed, modified, or exemptions put in works. Breaking stupid laws puts yourself at risk of the police or IRS coming after you for breaking the law!
If it was for road usage, why aren't cyclists also charged?
Shh, tech. cyclists should be charged. If you speak up, all the bikes in your state will have to have GPS tracker on it so you can pay a road mileage tax to the various local governments come tax time.
The sad thing is, I fully expect to see many misguided Slashdotters stand up for the state here and defend this ridiculous fine.
Um, we don't have nanotech or robots buidiing roads at near zero cost. Roads cost lots of money to build and keep up. I and most others are actually in favor of the government coming down on this guy for not paying road taxes.
Are you in favor of people skipping out on the taxes that they don't like, but they keep using the services that you and others paid the taxes for? I have no problem with this guy fueling up on his on. He better look at the cost of buying land and building all his own roads to drive on if he doesn't want to pay any road taxes.
What if it's solar-powered, will they tax the Sun?
It doesn't matter if it is fusion powered, zero point energy, or any other energy source. It matters that the government has to build and keep up roads. If we all had some magic fuel source cars that came from the factory fueled for 1 million miles, we'd still some how have to pay taxes to the local/state governments that are have to build the roads. If we all had nuclear powered cars, we'd end up having to have the D.O.T. stick a GPS Tax monitor on all our vehicles just so we'd know where to send all the tax money to. Or we could just have all public roads become instant toll roads.
The real tragedy, of course, isn't that he has died, but that (according to wikipedia) his programs are no longer broadcast anywhere. I haven't seen television in a while, so its possible that there's even better science programming available today. But, somehow, I doubt it.
This is sad. I've seen alot of junk on tv. There are several stations that should be running these shows. TLC, Discovery, SciFi Channel, and any PBS channel. There have been fancier wizbang shows, but none of them captured the attention or delivered the knowledge of Mr. Wizard. I'm going to have to buy these DVDs if only to give them to my kids as birthday or christmas presents. This is one gift idea that I think most slashdotters should try. I've got all of B5 and Robotech on DVD; I should have Mr. Wizards World as well!
I think the cops are in the right on this one. Why? The cops are only enforcing the law. The law basically says that no one can record conversations of others except police during police interviews. Why is thie a good thing? Think little. If you had the right to record conversations of others, then you would. You and other slashdotters aren't the problem. It's that if you have the right, then companies would have that right. (See where I'm heading with this.)
If companies were allowed to record converstations, then places like walmart, target, and gas stations would add audio recordings to their video tape survillance. Right now, it wouldn't be useful, but I could see "them" actually developing the tech to convert audio converstations into easily searchable text. (Heck, you might even be ID'd by your voice.) Would you want a world where every converstation that you had was recorded by whomever owned that building? You go to the gas station, and its recorded, you go to a Walmart type store and all your converstations are recorded, you go to any government building and every converstation that you have is recorded.
The law sounds like it was trying to prevent that which is a good thing.