How does a society that historically repressed individuality (aka "thinking for yourself") overcome these traditions and start to innovate (aka "thinking of NEW things")?... How many generations of Chinese have been born into that way of thinking? Isn't it possible that those 'creative-thinkers' might have been "bred-out" of the population?
Oh, you were referring to China. I thought that you were referring to the US and for what passes for our entire public education system. It seems that we've been leaning heavily on the primary schooling of other countries for some of our best new immigrates. If we were so great, why does it seem like every other educational system in the world is better than ours except for maybe our R&D university system. (Heck, that's where we make the biggest use of foreign educated folks!)
Saying that we are free thinking is silly. The US has historically repressed individuality. The Pilgrims and Quakers didn't come over here because they wanted their children to be free thinking individuals. Our system has encouraged farm workers and factory workers, but discouraged anyone of being an inventor. Those are the weird folks.
China if anything has a history of valuing the types of folks that we routinely dislike. O.k. they have a stricter general system, but they do ID certain types and pool them all together sooner than we do. You can be creative as much as you want within your field, but every where else you need to conform. That's the same general rules as the US. If you don't conform to the surrounding rules, the general population will arrange the rules, laws, mores, and police to where you'll be arrested and jailed sooner or later.
If you're rational then you don't even need any proof (not that it isn't abundantly plentiful) of evolution -- it's just a logical consequence of DNA and natural variation.
This is exactly the reason that I view both sides as a religion.
If you want proof of evolution and can't find it, then I have to ask where you are looking or what you are looking for! In every conceivable place you look for evidence of evolution you will find it, from the fossil record, from comparing DNA of any species, from the variety of species around us at every stage of speciation
Nah, I don't make it habit any more of looking for proof. That was something that I demanded of teachers. When they couldn't provide any, the entire subject lost value for me. I'll agree DNA and evolutionary techs do work. It's how folks want to suddenly apply that to everything like it should work and make me believe it. I'm sorry, but that's hand waving, and hoping I don't ask any questions.
My wife on the other looks for proof to support her view point. She's got tons of it. Most likely none of it would convince you. I on the other hand worry about why my teacher couldn't supply me with anything thing other than a "trust us this works." But these derided creationists will present all their proof to me whenever asked.
So which cultural set has a long term evolutionary advantage?
Heck, I don't believe in climate change as presented. Everything that I've ever seen on the subject says that the climate has never been stable. Climate change in any form is "natural" is basically what I've been shown from both sides. Folks want to say Climate Change is an evil man made sin that can only be fixed by massive life style changes for your own good. That's actually the religion that I worry.
Evolution isn't spending billions a year of our federal tax money. Studying the climate is though.
I don't mind spending billions to figure out how to force Earth's Climate to stay the current way regardless of what it wants to do. The climate will shift however it wants and we better be prepared to jump in that direction ahead of time.
If only our economic market was as unstoppable as the climate. Then the governments wouldn't worry about bailouts because the crash would have happened and we'd have had the firestorms, hurricanes, earth quakes, floods, or mud slides needed to make the proper economic adjustments. We don't like the bad things that firestorms, hurricanes, earth quakes, floods, or mud slides do to us regardless of the "good" that they do Earth's environment or the economy in general.
We already paid $200 billion [newnetworks.com] for a nation wide fiber optics network that never delivered. When is anyone going to ask what happened to all that money?
We paid for nation wide fiber optics, and it never got delivered. The telcos should give us our money back, all of it. If they can't afford it, go bankrupt, get nationalized, and let someone competent take over. Oh, and send the execs who squandered it all to jail.
If Obama announces that every telco that was involved in that $200B project is being fined $200B plus interest, then I'd actually vote for him the next time around. I'd love it if either party fines the industry proper. Then what I'd do is out source it to the top 3 Korean or Japanese telcoms as they obviously have an idea of how to properly wire up their customers.
I've been waiting for India, China, and Russia to take charge and really develop linux/Open Source for their own markets. Each country could cripple us if they could just cheaply get the bulk of their population online and using their language on the net.
What if we had to learn Russian, Chinese, or Indian, to really use the nice/good version of Linux? It'll happen. The question is when.
One might as well stop there and realize that the discovery of DNA equals the FACT of evolution, but for any creationist numskulls who can't take it the final step, let's note that when my kids (or rather my population's kids) compete with yours then there'll be winners and losers, and we dub the winners to have been "fitter" (better suited to thrive given the prevailing environmental and competetive landscape), as in (preferential) "survival of the fittest".
Yeah, the thing that slashdot really can't accept is in many places on the globe you are more competitive if you are creationist. I just glance at these threads because they are silly. Evolution and creationism are both religions in my book. I believe in DNA and evolutionary tools, but I've never been shown anything that makes me take it on faith that their is all this wide spread evidence for it. Why? Well, what parts of it have you been shown? The mendell plants thing. Heck, creationists have nothing against that. (That's the same species but with slight known differences.) DNA. I've got no problems with. I have problems with ever since middle school on up every teacher that I've asked for additional info for real hard data on the subject has given me the run around. Evolution is what I've been told to believe by the state trust us the evidence is there you just don't need to see it.
Now my wife is a creationist. Rolls Eyes. She gets things in the mail and reads stuff on the internet reinforcing her viewpoint that there are "facts" that support her. She teaches the kids her religion. So which view point is evolutionary more fit than the other? One is a state supported religion and I have to take on faith; the other has been the old stand by that many people have found some sort of evidence to support.
Neither view point is an evolutionary advantage at this point in time. If anything, we will still be having this discussion in 10K years. The only way one set of views would be an advantage over the other is if there were a bloody war where one side killed off the other based on believe in evolution or creationism.
Yes, there are rights and distribution issues with the current system that prevent that from happening. Which is why that system is outdated and must be changed. Just as the world no longer needs record companies, the world really no longer needs distributors.
Once the Networks eventually figure this -- very obvious -- fact out, then we will see not only real progress, but perhaps we might actually get to see complete seasons of the shows we love. Firefly, for example, would never have been canceled if it was distributed under this model.
Um, I'll disagree. It would be nice if had one place like hulu or youtube and could trivially watch any TV show that's ever been. That's not likely to happen. What will likely happen is that we will have abc, nbc, cbs, fox, upn, hbo, disney and others having their own sites and throwing their self produced series straight onto the net. Instead of time blocks, you'll have an entire season with a few personalized ads. Heck, I see TIVO or other DVR integration where you just select the season of the show that you'd like saved to be watched later and it would upload how many times that you've actually viewed them.
I see cable channels dieing. I see distributors and shows surviving. The trick will be in changing channels and finding new shows. TV is nice in that you just flip channels to change streams and you know when and what is on. If you've never heard of hbo, or cbs's new show called star trek, then you'll likely have a harder time finding it.
The flip side of that is once you've found a series that you like, you don't have to worry about when it is aired to view it. You just watch the first 2-3 shows to see if you like it, and then watch the rest whenever. Heck places like slashdot, wired, or any given blog will get the word out that there is a new show that you might like to see.
Corruption is a fairly common attribute of government. Regardless of when and where in human history you look... Power can both corrupt and attract the corrupt/easily corruptible. What's actually more worrying is when people display such great faith that "their government" is immune to or free of corruption.
There are days when I think that we need to twick a few parts of how government is run. First off we like elections, so we've got to keep those. What we don't like is the political parties and politicians that we get stuck with. I'd like a nice easy app that would plop out the nearest valid citizen to run for office/be drafted into office given a lat/log position. Every time the local level on up that there is an elected position that doesn't have anyone running to fill it or that has only one person running, we'd use the the little app to generate a valid name from within that town, county, or state. That name would show up on the ballot. (Actually, I think every elected position should have 3-5 choices and the incubate shouldn't be labeled as such on the ballot.) This would mean our actual government would be more like the class room governments that we had in school. No one wants to do the job, so the teacher just randomly picks a few names from the class and we vote which of the two has to take the job.
I also think those that want to run for any elected office should serve a community service prison sentence after their term in office (the term of service is the length of the time that they were in office.) Actually community service isn't quite where I think that they need to be, but I think then we could potentially get some useful work out of politicians after they are out of office. (This assumes and treats all politicians like criminals just to be on the safe side.)
It is not "pointless" to release such reports -- they show the results specifically of an organization's investigation into a topic. Not just a source of info about the topic but also a source of info about what the organization considered and concluded on that topic. Very important for an organization that is supposed to be accountable to the people, such as Congress. These CRS reports used to be (and should be again) released by the GPO in hardcopy. CRS lobbied against bills that would have required them to be published over the internet.
Hmm. It'd be nice if congress would make all CRS reports public unless told not to. Even better is to note the title of private reports and which congress folks sealed it.
The way I view the concept of the CRS. When we want to know more on a topic, we go to wikipedia to find the outline and basically agreed stuff on subject. Congress gets to commission specialists out there to actually research stuff to make the reports. I'd hope that it would be of a higher quality than wikipedia. The best possible use for this is 99% of the time we'd completely ignore it until we hit google on x topic and instead of wikipedia being the first return that www.crs.gov/report/ would be it. That's when we'd actually bother to read one. We'd get the 5-10 minute report that a congress person would on that given subject. I'd think that it would help our average education level to actually release this stuff.
Mind you, this could have an 'unexpected' benefit. Anyone running a bot would find they can't open a browser or play music or something. People would have a good incentive to make sure their PC is only running what it should be running.
What are you talking about? Bot net writers are smart. They'll be able to run because their app won't count towards the limit. They'll set their bot net as a virus/malware scanner.
It's folks like me that won't be able to use this. What if I wanted 2 or more copies of notepad, the file explorer, and MS picture and fax viewer open? I wouldn't be able to use the starter edition for anything. Heck, I usually have IE, two copies of the file explorer, and notepad++ open at any given time. (I moved away from notepad to notepad++ mainly because notepad++ has tabs. I'd love for the file explorer to have tabs.)
This might be work able, but it would be difficult.
I still don't understand why all these companies feel like they need to create their own bloated ecosystem on top of the OS. All the #$%@#! application needs to do is check for an update and link me to its website (even that is not necessary). Adobe is the worst at the this-they have their own $^$#&*$@ file browser, for $@#%'s sake! And their updater nags and doesn't work properly half the time.
I'm not excited to see Google go down this path. If this is cloud computing, I'd rather be from the moon!
Mod this guy up. You know the app that annoys me the worst? It's FF. That app pops up almost every time I start it asking either to update extensions or install downloaded extensions. Adobe's updater crashes most of the time. Flash is evil. You don't know until you hit something like youtube and then presto half the sites you visited yesterday magically don't work today because you need the next flash. I seriously doubt youtube changed their stuff. I think that's just flash's annoying way to force people to update. I actually don't mind windows update half the time. The Sun Java app seems like the quietest app that checks for updates.
I really think that its about time for MS or some one to say enough is enough. We need an app updater as part of windows. I'd also like to set never check for updates and never be bothered by them. That's what I do 98% of the time when given the option. I'm sorry if you want me to install your latest greatest or all your patches. I'm happy with my version. I don't hate breaking things to update them. Today there is no way to roll back to yesterdays crap most of the time either. Once you get that update, you are stuck with the update.
You mean if the license plate matches that of a banned customer AND the face matches for the face recognition algorithm? Yeah, that could work...except that it is easy to get a new license plate. Only if walmart had DMV records could they catch you if you switched plates. Same with credit cards.
Actually, I was thinking of them using the license plate rec as the sole tie in until their face recon gets good enough. O.k. you could switch plates, but they'd still have the visit recorded to a plate. Say that they've been recording every customer's visit for the last ten years. (Data storage has gotten to like cheap 1 TB flash cards or cheap 1 PB HDs.) Their face recon will improve over the next 2-3 decades. What's really bad is that the police or individuals have a difficult time matching up photos with individuals. Do you remember folks from your junior high year book? Usually not really only the names. Well, they'll have 10 years of recorded imagery of visits. They'll have pics of when you were 6 walking around with mommy to when you are 16 and trying to buy cigs or beer to when you are 22 and actually buy a gun or beer. They'll be able to string it all together and once they do, presto, they've got everything that you've ever bought at a walmart.
I don't even want to think how long most of those tasks would take with current hardware. With DVRs, we might be able to keep a month of security records. All other operations on that data is most likely difficult. In 10-20 years, it may be much more likely though.
Interesting idea, except that face recognition is just not accurate enough.
In fact, I would comment that it may never be accurate enough for what you propose : I don't always recognize the faces of my own friends in photos. The human 'face' can be altered, obscured, distorted, lit differently, aged, scarred in countless ways that would prevent this software from being able to be certain enough to auto-evict people from wal mart.
Actually, that's the beauty of it. They don't have to do face recon to ID most of the time. O.k. to keep banned criminals out they do. As long as they can follow individuals through the store, that would be good enough. You then tie it to one of two things. A purchase or a vehicle. Most Walmart parking lots have 4-5 entrances, so you'd need license plate scanners at each one of those entrances so they'd use that as a fairly unique ID to tie you with something physical. Walmart doesn't need the DMV. They could just make an educated guesses. Trust me face recon may be bad, but license plate scanner tech has gotten really good lately. It just needs to be cheap enough for your average store to want to add it as an 1K additional security part. Last time that I checked, they cost around 20K. That's far to much.
Maybe I watched too much CSI and "X Files". But couldn't someone build a national DNA registry by going through our trash or recycling bins?
Nah, too difficult. It'd be much easier to develop and give the tech for average store video cameras to ID their customers and let the stores to most of your leg work. Do you have any idea what percentage of the nation that walmart could ID with that tech? Say they tie your recording with your cash, credit, or check payment. Two out of the 3 of those will give them ID on you. Well, if you've paid in cash, they just let their recorders follow you to your form of transportation. Which would either be bus or car. They record the as much vehicle info as they can and attach it to your video record. It's got to be automatic without any human involvement. After 6 months, a single walmart could ID a good chuck of the residents of that town.
That doesn't even get into if walmart decides to dump all that info to Walmart HQ and cross reference it. Imagine if those walmart greeters actually did keep the people out of walmart that were nationally banned from walmart. If you've ever caused an incident or shop lifted within a walmart you get banned and go on their black list. Today it would take you being arrested and the police to find out that you've been previously banned from the store and add that as an additional charge to what ever your arrest was. With this tech, they could scan everyone walking into the entry and have a automated voices/holograms say welcome "x" or "You've been banned from this chain please exit the premises." If you don't leave ASAP, then they summon the local cops. Laws generally only reach nationally, Walmart could apply that to every walmart on the globe.;)
I use walmart as the example that people recognize as the largest store that could have plenty or R&D to develop this in house. It could be any national chain. If the video recording industry properly develops it, then it could be every gas station/small business/ or certain video recording usage companies. Customers don't have a clue what kinda of video recording that stores use. What if there was the small business anti-theft alliance, to do this instead of walmart? You'd see people that would try to fight walmart or other large national chains be glad of small businesses going after local crime.
At first I thought "No way am I going to let them take blood from me if I'm arrested!", but after reading the article all they do is swab the inside of your cheek. It really is less invasive than fingerprinting.
I've been fingerprinted twice, once after being arrested and once after applying for a federal job. The first time was the worst, the machine couldn't read my print AT ALL, so the officer tried pressing harder. That registered a faint image of a finger print. So they gave me some gel to clean my fingers, that did nothing to help so the officer continued to press harder and harder. We finally got one print to show up after a few minutes when the officer forced all of his body weight onto my finger. ONE PRINT, then it was on to the next 9 fingers...
Second time didn't require as much force, but we had other issues, my finger wasn't rolling right. The person operating the machine had to do each finger 5+ times to get the machine to actually accept the print.
Sounds like you got some one that's lousy with prints. If you ever need your prints done for a job interview, ask for crime scene to do it. I work with an ex crime scene guy and there are only 3-4 crime scene folks around here that are well versed and practiced at taking prints. From him, I wouldn't trust anyone else here to do it. (Well, they could but they don't have the practice to do it quickly and easily.)
I get shivers thinking about jail staff doing anything. Forget DNA or fingerprints. Our jail can't always match the right photo with the right booking. That happens lots of times. Now think about that. They've got them and take a picture, but the picture is for the wrong pulled up record. I'm sure that it happens with finger prints since they usually do the prints before filling out the crap on the card. (This is in case they screw up the prints they won't have to fill the form out again.)
Computers can't stop or slow poor human error data entry to the system. It takes a human that knows the individuals involved to check it! You or I could tell the easy obvious females on male records or that's a pic of a BF and its a WM record. But what if they mess up and switch two WM records? You've got to know what the 2 WM look like.
There are days that I'd like a national digital year book just so it would reduce the errors in our existing system.
So the only way to be safe is to keep building bigger weapons? I don't suppose youve ever looked into the 50 year immediately following WWII? Whats that meme round here "those that don't understand the mistakes of history bound to repeat them".
Not only is heading towards a cold war situation generally a bad idea, but given the current economic situation America doesn't stand a chance. China has a manufacturing capability much greater than America and given how china virtually owns America, you cant even hit china with trade sanctions.
Oh, I don't know. I figure that we turned out fairly well. I'd actually rather be in a cold war situation than most other war situations. I'm fascinated about how everyone assumes that China is our enemy or should be on the other side of the US. If anything, we'd be changing our social system to match their culture not the reverse. It's funny that folks want us to use damn near force to change their minds about how the world works.
My best advice to China on how to "conquer" the US is pay attention to Japanese Anime & Manga on the US cultural influence and thought. If China plays its cards right, it could have us begging to be made part of their country. Nah, wouldn't happen as we've been spending the last 200 years telling ourselves that we are the best country on the planet. Though they really should consider exporting daily sitcoms/soap operas/ just usual TV crap translated into English and sold abit cheaper than other sources to the US. They'd be utterly amazed at what they could get away with.
Actually, Obama is pursuing a very rational course here. In short, the US does not want to start an anti-satellite arms race, because we're already so far ahead in the satellite race - why reset the game board to zero? A couple of points to consider:
Nothing about an "anti-space" weapons ban would slow/stop killer stat weapons. Russia and China have 'em already. I'm sure India, Japan, and most of the EU could build 'em as well. When your average voter/citizen hears "anti-space weapon ban." They think of nuclear weapons in space, or orbital weapons platforms of some sort. It wouldn't stop some one from shooting down our existing resources from Earth.
The best thing that Iraq could have done to hurt the US would have been to shot down every single ID'd US satellite. It would have cost us billions to replace. Does anyone have any idea how much it would take to build 4-5 ships that just ID satellites and with the bare min tech to kill them. I'd think two navy ships one for each coast could decimate our geosynchronous satellites. Forget 9/11. If 9/11 had been aimed at killing off only our satellites rather than our civilians, then we'd be out billions if we wanted to replace them, and the lack of loss of life would have left us without cause to just invade a country, and it would have trashed most of our global force multipliers.
Ironically, we'd be more involved in space if we had 3rd world nations shooting down our satellites.
I can believe that, though he should really have been driving so as not to be that close in the first place. I rode horses most of my life, and when I came to learn to drive I found it very unsettling indeed not to have the ability to push the car sideways with my leg. Also, driving without wearing a helmet of some kind made me feel kinda naked.
Um, you can wear a helmet in a car if you really want to.
I think that Australia should just fine each involved company to the max. They shouldn't give any of them a "free pass." As long as they make the entire industry that tired to dance around the law by ignoring it the same or similar punishment, then it'd be mostly favor.
If the Australian government wants to make video games unprofitable for them, then more power to them. The effect could be an entire industry boycotting a country though. Or worse, use Australia as the "bad guys" in the next series of games instead of Nazis, USSR, evil Arabians, or space aliens.
We've got silly, but effective lobbies here in the US. I can't really complain about the ones that they are stuck with. If they, upset the Australian citizens enough, the Australian Citizens will make new lobbies to get easier or broader ratings.
Heck, I'm constantly stunned when I watch G & PG stuff now. It seems like stuff that's getting G would have gotten a PG, and the PG stuff would have been PG-13 back when I was a kid. PG-13 seems close to what the NC-17 used to be. NC-17 used to be the anime rating. Now they show that on cartoon network.
It's not that I care for me when I watch a stupid Disney G movie. I just liked knowing that standard was fairly kid safe. Heck, it seems like I can't even trust Veggie Tales to be kid safe. Well, atleast I can let them play my old school games. Nope, there's Smash TV and Metal Slug in there! O.k. we are sticking with FF. Nope, there is some language in there. O.k. less than 5 words through 5 series, but still.
When are we to stop comparing the US with EU states? If we were going to compare EU states to the US, then we should do it to individual US states. I actually don't care if we are "behind" EU in general or "ahead" since no one apparently considers the EU a practical entity for comparison purposes.
Do you realize the fastest growing energy sector in the US? It's pretty much wind. Why? Because it's a pain in for the big boys to get oil, coal, gas, or nuclear approved and funded. Getting funding for wind power now is easy. The other thing is that wind power can be bought in very small slices. So if I as a big boy energy company had only a few million to spend on new production this quarter, well I can build a few wind power plants somewhere.
Heck the Perkins Plan was basically that the big energy boys have long since woken up and realized that the time is ripe to really leech the US to fund our grand energy change over. I haven't seen any real details of the Perkins Plan, but that it's been introduced by "the right players." Means that it'll reappear in certain lobby groups and the given states involved could in theory fund it themselves. (They'd want federal money, but sure 5-10 states could do it themselves.) Wind has issues just like everything else, but they are just as solvable as anything else.
I'm actually not that surprised to hear how much wind power we are building. Every few day or so it seems like I'm behind either a house on a semi or giant parts of a wind mill on a trailer. Wind will happen despite the government not because of it.
Here's a hint. You are being leeched to pay for "renewable energy" built by your good ole "energy companies" of yore.
They aren't stupid. They know that the public doesn't want to fund to build coal, oil, or nuclear power. They know that the public has a thing for anything termed "renewable" even if it is more expensive than other sources. So they get us to pay as much of their costs as possible. Even when "renewable energy" becomes price competitive to build on its own, they'll still try to use subsidies as far as possible on general principles.
I can't blame the "energy companies." I'm iffy on blaming the politicians in this case. They've actually been doing what voters want. The problem is when to stop subsidies. That's one of those trick questions in politics.
I prefer looking at Hydro electric. 317,686 million Kilowatt-hours for the US versus 26,944 million Kilowatt-hours. Or about 4 times as much per person. I live in the Northwest though, and 82% of the power for the region is from Hydroelectric. The rest is either natural gas or nuclear and mostly for Seattle.
I get very mixed when I think of hydro electric. Most of those really big dams in the US that we make use of have been around seen before our living memory. So we don't really realize how much land area that they eat up. Make a trip over to China and ask how many people and how much has needed to be relocated due to one massive dam project.
Hydro-electric seems like the most land wasteful way for us to generate electricity. It has worked for the US because we built most of our really big ones before many were out there to move. They all have dis advantages. At least with wind power, you can still make use of much of the land for farming and such. Solar power can be mounted on top of existing structures or in existing yards. (Doing that wouldn't take up "additional" land area. It would only cut the need for other sources of energy.)
Nuclear or oil generally comes out way ahead when "land area" is your yard stick for energy use.
Korea is roughly 1/100th the size of the US. If we estimate a similar plan in the US based on size only, it would cost $2.46 trillion USD. The Korean government is paying 1.3 trillion of the 34.1 total (or roughly 4%). If the US government did something similar, it would be about $100 billion USD. If they were generous they might give 8% which would be about $200 billion USD. I wonder what might happen if the US gave its private telecom companies $200 billion to execute such a plan...
Didn't Clinton already give the telcoms billions in "tax cuts" so we'd have bad high width now? Your statement about land area is flippant at best. Why? Because we don't have to do the entire US. Heck, I live in AR, and I'd be thrilled to hear that in NY, LA, Dallas, or Houston that you could get 100 MBps at affordable to the average person prices. AR would be one the last states to upgrade. But NY, CA, TX, and FL major cities should have 100 MBps at cheap prices.
We don't. Every 6 months or so this issue comes up. What's worse is the state of our cell phone prices. Other places would have less than $10 per month due to competition. I'd be thrilled if any of those foreign cell phone companies came here. Heck, I don't even care if I had coverage throughout the nation as long as you could manage a single town's coverage at cheap prices. That's something that's impossible over here though.
It's one area where I actually don't mind city government trying to offer service. (It can hardly do worse.)
What is the more correct conclusion, is when the system is failing but has potential, you review and alter the system so as to reduce the failure potential. Privatised for profit prisons will always be a failure at rehabilitation, as rehabilitation costs money and in reality eliminates the future profit potential of current inmates (no repeat offenders).
Corporations are simple amoral engines of greed, their priority is to charge as much as possible while spending the least amount possible, hence locking up convicted inmates in the cheapest way possible that they are legally able to get away with. So low cost guards basically low IQ thugs in uniform who often derive perverted sexual fulfilment from abusing people, rather then properly trained correctional (note the term) services officers, which of course would 'cost' a corporation two to three times as much, where as of course repeat offenders only cost the public ten to one hundred times that in damages, pain and suffering, so corporate profits first the publics interest last and keep those returning profits from repeat offenders coming in.
Um, you are confusing why most folks want prisoners to be sent to prison. They don't want rehabilitation. They want punishment. They want these prisoners dropped into a prison/hole and never to be let back into their society ever again. They don't want to pay for individuals to try to brain wash them into being better citizens. That's what education and religion are for and it's failed in these cases. It's to late for that. It isn't to late to hire similar minded citizens that haven't broken the law to put them in charge of the punishment of the prisoners though. That's why people get upset when they hear that prisoners are living a soft life and aren't being harshly punished in prison.
I'm mixed on it myself. I'd rather build a single prison arcology and everyone that commits a crime in the rest of the US gets sent to the arcology. (I'd not have any prison guards or such except to prevent folks leaving.) It's one of those things where as long as I don't ever have to be aware of what the conditions are like within said arcology are like than I just don't care. If the arcology is mostly self supporting, than we can just send our rejects there.
Unfortunately, you're right. There's likely no 100% effective way to prevent the smuggling of items into prisons. Say you invent a magical contriband detector that always sees any item you want on a person. All it takes is to bribe the person operating the machine, and it becomes useless. Make a machine that's totally automated and decides for itself, and you're getting dangerously close to Skynet.
Oh please, it doesn't take skynet. All it takes is to treat everyone entering/exiting the said prison to be treated to the same entry requirements/searches as the prisoners. If it were required for everyone entering a prison to strip, change into visitor, worker, or prisoner cloths and leave all other belongings in a locker, then you'd slow/stop alot of that. You'd also want to record the entire session as well and make smuggling anything into prison a crime. (And not have the prison workers be the ones monitoring the videos.) This would mean if any given visitor, prison worker, or prisoner was videoed smuggling anything into the prison, then the same actions would be taken towards the individuals. (Sure, I doubt that would ever happen.)
I also understand that it's not all about the games. In fact, the most unconscionably EULAs usually are on corporate software. But I talk about games primarily because I know games, I used to love games, and I'm genuinely losing interest in one of my favourite hobbies because of how the customer is being treated.
I know computer games can be fun, but they can be highly annoying to setup/use. That's why the bulk of my gaming library is PS2. If I want to play something, I just stick it in the PS2, see the sony logo, the game company logo, the splash screen/intro movie, then hit new game/continue.
Now on just about any free computer game that my kids want to play. It's install/upgrade flash. It's "freely" register with us before we let you touch our "free game." It's be annoying, jump through a few hoops, and then we can start on the tech. specs if your machine isn't even good enough for the program. I've avoided computer games for awhile because it's always been a mystery if any given game would work decently in my computer. Contrast that with any video game console. If I want a PS2, Wii, or DS game, I see the damn logo at wal-mart and know that the game will always "just" work.
After working as the IT fix-it guy at work, it is nice not too worry about that crap at home as well. Sure, I miss out on some things like WOW, but I've still got a stack of games that I've yet to play through that don't cost me per month, or that annoy me too much to put the damn disc in the machine. When I have to create an account or register to play a console game, that's pretty much when I'll decide to stop playing console games.
Slashdot Mirror
How does a society that historically repressed individuality (aka "thinking for yourself") overcome these traditions and start to innovate (aka "thinking of NEW things")? ...
How many generations of Chinese have been born into that way of thinking? Isn't it possible that those 'creative-thinkers' might have been "bred-out" of the population?
Oh, you were referring to China. I thought that you were referring to the US and for what passes for our entire public education system. It seems that we've been leaning heavily on the primary schooling of other countries for some of our best new immigrates. If we were so great, why does it seem like every other educational system in the world is better than ours except for maybe our R&D university system. (Heck, that's where we make the biggest use of foreign educated folks!)
Saying that we are free thinking is silly. The US has historically repressed individuality. The Pilgrims and Quakers didn't come over here because they wanted their children to be free thinking individuals. Our system has encouraged farm workers and factory workers, but discouraged anyone of being an inventor. Those are the weird folks.
China if anything has a history of valuing the types of folks that we routinely dislike. O.k. they have a stricter general system, but they do ID certain types and pool them all together sooner than we do. You can be creative as much as you want within your field, but every where else you need to conform. That's the same general rules as the US. If you don't conform to the surrounding rules, the general population will arrange the rules, laws, mores, and police to where you'll be arrested and jailed sooner or later.
If you're rational then you don't even need any proof (not that it isn't abundantly plentiful) of evolution -- it's just a logical consequence of DNA and natural variation.
This is exactly the reason that I view both sides as a religion.
If you want proof of evolution and can't find it, then I have to ask where you are looking or what you are looking for! In every conceivable place you look for evidence of evolution you will find it, from the fossil record, from comparing DNA of any species, from the variety of species around us at every stage of speciation
Nah, I don't make it habit any more of looking for proof. That was something that I demanded of teachers. When they couldn't provide any, the entire subject lost value for me. I'll agree DNA and evolutionary techs do work. It's how folks want to suddenly apply that to everything like it should work and make me believe it. I'm sorry, but that's hand waving, and hoping I don't ask any questions.
My wife on the other looks for proof to support her view point. She's got tons of it. Most likely none of it would convince you. I on the other hand worry about why my teacher couldn't supply me with anything thing other than a "trust us this works." But these derided creationists will present all their proof to me whenever asked.
So which cultural set has a long term evolutionary advantage?
Heck, I don't believe in climate change as presented. Everything that I've ever seen on the subject says that the climate has never been stable. Climate change in any form is "natural" is basically what I've been shown from both sides. Folks want to say Climate Change is an evil man made sin that can only be fixed by massive life style changes for your own good. That's actually the religion that I worry.
Evolution isn't spending billions a year of our federal tax money. Studying the climate is though.
I don't mind spending billions to figure out how to force Earth's Climate to stay the current way regardless of what it wants to do. The climate will shift however it wants and we better be prepared to jump in that direction ahead of time.
If only our economic market was as unstoppable as the climate. Then the governments wouldn't worry about bailouts because the crash would have happened and we'd have had the firestorms, hurricanes, earth quakes, floods, or mud slides needed to make the proper economic adjustments. We don't like the bad things that firestorms, hurricanes, earth quakes, floods, or mud slides do to us regardless of the "good" that they do Earth's environment or the economy in general.
We already paid $200 billion [newnetworks.com] for a nation wide fiber optics network that never delivered. When is anyone going to ask what happened to all that money?
We paid for nation wide fiber optics, and it never got delivered. The telcos should give us our money back, all of it. If they can't afford it, go bankrupt, get nationalized, and let someone competent take over. Oh, and send the execs who squandered it all to jail.
If Obama announces that every telco that was involved in that $200B project is being fined $200B plus interest, then I'd actually vote for him the next time around. I'd love it if either party fines the industry proper. Then what I'd do is out source it to the top 3 Korean or Japanese telcoms as they obviously have an idea of how to properly wire up their customers.
I've been waiting for India, China, and Russia to take charge and really develop linux/Open Source for their own markets. Each country could cripple us if they could just cheaply get the bulk of their population online and using their language on the net.
What if we had to learn Russian, Chinese, or Indian, to really use the nice/good version of Linux? It'll happen. The question is when.
One might as well stop there and realize that the discovery of DNA equals the FACT of evolution, but for any creationist numskulls who can't take it the final step, let's note that when my kids (or rather my population's kids) compete with yours then there'll be winners and losers, and we dub the winners to have been "fitter" (better suited to thrive given the prevailing environmental and competetive landscape), as in (preferential) "survival of the fittest".
Yeah, the thing that slashdot really can't accept is in many places on the globe you are more competitive if you are creationist. I just glance at these threads because they are silly. Evolution and creationism are both religions in my book. I believe in DNA and evolutionary tools, but I've never been shown anything that makes me take it on faith that their is all this wide spread evidence for it. Why? Well, what parts of it have you been shown? The mendell plants thing. Heck, creationists have nothing against that. (That's the same species but with slight known differences.) DNA. I've got no problems with. I have problems with ever since middle school on up every teacher that I've asked for additional info for real hard data on the subject has given me the run around. Evolution is what I've been told to believe by the state trust us the evidence is there you just don't need to see it.
Now my wife is a creationist. Rolls Eyes. She gets things in the mail and reads stuff on the internet reinforcing her viewpoint that there are "facts" that support her. She teaches the kids her religion. So which view point is evolutionary more fit than the other? One is a state supported religion and I have to take on faith; the other has been the old stand by that many people have found some sort of evidence to support.
Neither view point is an evolutionary advantage at this point in time. If anything, we will still be having this discussion in 10K years. The only way one set of views would be an advantage over the other is if there were a bloody war where one side killed off the other based on believe in evolution or creationism.
Yes, there are rights and distribution issues with the current system that prevent that from happening. Which is why that system is outdated and must be changed. Just as the world no longer needs record companies, the world really no longer needs distributors.
Once the Networks eventually figure this -- very obvious -- fact out, then we will see not only real progress, but perhaps we might actually get to see complete seasons of the shows we love. Firefly, for example, would never have been canceled if it was distributed under this model.
Um, I'll disagree. It would be nice if had one place like hulu or youtube and could trivially watch any TV show that's ever been. That's not likely to happen. What will likely happen is that we will have abc, nbc, cbs, fox, upn, hbo, disney and others having their own sites and throwing their self produced series straight onto the net. Instead of time blocks, you'll have an entire season with a few personalized ads. Heck, I see TIVO or other DVR integration where you just select the season of the show that you'd like saved to be watched later and it would upload how many times that you've actually viewed them.
I see cable channels dieing. I see distributors and shows surviving. The trick will be in changing channels and finding new shows. TV is nice in that you just flip channels to change streams and you know when and what is on. If you've never heard of hbo, or cbs's new show called star trek, then you'll likely have a harder time finding it.
The flip side of that is once you've found a series that you like, you don't have to worry about when it is aired to view it. You just watch the first 2-3 shows to see if you like it, and then watch the rest whenever. Heck places like slashdot, wired, or any given blog will get the word out that there is a new show that you might like to see.
Corruption is a fairly common attribute of government. Regardless of when and where in human history you look... Power can both corrupt and attract the corrupt/easily corruptible. What's actually more worrying is when people display such great faith that "their government" is immune to or free of corruption.
There are days when I think that we need to twick a few parts of how government is run. First off we like elections, so we've got to keep those. What we don't like is the political parties and politicians that we get stuck with. I'd like a nice easy app that would plop out the nearest valid citizen to run for office/be drafted into office given a lat/log position. Every time the local level on up that there is an elected position that doesn't have anyone running to fill it or that has only one person running, we'd use the the little app to generate a valid name from within that town, county, or state. That name would show up on the ballot. (Actually, I think every elected position should have 3-5 choices and the incubate shouldn't be labeled as such on the ballot.) This would mean our actual government would be more like the class room governments that we had in school. No one wants to do the job, so the teacher just randomly picks a few names from the class and we vote which of the two has to take the job.
I also think those that want to run for any elected office should serve a community service prison sentence after their term in office (the term of service is the length of the time that they were in office.) Actually community service isn't quite where I think that they need to be, but I think then we could potentially get some useful work out of politicians after they are out of office. (This assumes and treats all politicians like criminals just to be on the safe side.)
It is not "pointless" to release such reports -- they show the results specifically of an organization's investigation into a topic. Not just a source of info about the topic but also a source of info about what the organization considered and concluded on that topic. Very important for an organization that is supposed to be accountable to the people, such as Congress. These CRS reports used to be (and should be again) released by the GPO in hardcopy. CRS lobbied against bills that would have required them to be published over the internet.
Hmm. It'd be nice if congress would make all CRS reports public unless told not to. Even better is to note the title of private reports and which congress folks sealed it.
This would soon become more useful than the https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/. Heck it might even become more useful than wikipedia.
The way I view the concept of the CRS. When we want to know more on a topic, we go to wikipedia to find the outline and basically agreed stuff on subject. Congress gets to commission specialists out there to actually research stuff to make the reports. I'd hope that it would be of a higher quality than wikipedia. The best possible use for this is 99% of the time we'd completely ignore it until we hit google on x topic and instead of wikipedia being the first return that www.crs.gov/report/ would be it. That's when we'd actually bother to read one. We'd get the 5-10 minute report that a congress person would on that given subject. I'd think that it would help our average education level to actually release this stuff.
Mind you, this could have an 'unexpected' benefit. Anyone running a bot would find they can't open a browser or play music or something. People would have a good incentive to make sure their PC is only running what it should be running.
What are you talking about? Bot net writers are smart. They'll be able to run because their app won't count towards the limit. They'll set their bot net as a virus/malware scanner.
It's folks like me that won't be able to use this. What if I wanted 2 or more copies of notepad, the file explorer, and MS picture and fax viewer open? I wouldn't be able to use the starter edition for anything. Heck, I usually have IE, two copies of the file explorer, and notepad++ open at any given time. (I moved away from notepad to notepad++ mainly because notepad++ has tabs. I'd love for the file explorer to have tabs.)
This might be work able, but it would be difficult.
I still don't understand why all these companies feel like they need to create their own bloated ecosystem on top of the OS. All the #$%@#! application needs to do is check for an update and link me to its website (even that is not necessary). Adobe is the worst at the this-they have their own $^$#&*$@ file browser, for $@#%'s sake! And their updater nags and doesn't work properly half the time.
I'm not excited to see Google go down this path. If this is cloud computing, I'd rather be from the moon!
Mod this guy up. You know the app that annoys me the worst? It's FF. That app pops up almost every time I start it asking either to update extensions or install downloaded extensions. Adobe's updater crashes most of the time. Flash is evil. You don't know until you hit something like youtube and then presto half the sites you visited yesterday magically don't work today because you need the next flash. I seriously doubt youtube changed their stuff. I think that's just flash's annoying way to force people to update. I actually don't mind windows update half the time. The Sun Java app seems like the quietest app that checks for updates.
I really think that its about time for MS or some one to say enough is enough. We need an app updater as part of windows. I'd also like to set never check for updates and never be bothered by them. That's what I do 98% of the time when given the option. I'm sorry if you want me to install your latest greatest or all your patches. I'm happy with my version. I don't hate breaking things to update them. Today there is no way to roll back to yesterdays crap most of the time either. Once you get that update, you are stuck with the update.
You mean if the license plate matches that of a banned customer AND the face matches for the face recognition algorithm? Yeah, that could work...except that it is easy to get a new license plate. Only if walmart had DMV records could they catch you if you switched plates. Same with credit cards.
Actually, I was thinking of them using the license plate rec as the sole tie in until their face recon gets good enough. O.k. you could switch plates, but they'd still have the visit recorded to a plate. Say that they've been recording every customer's visit for the last ten years. (Data storage has gotten to like cheap 1 TB flash cards or cheap 1 PB HDs.) Their face recon will improve over the next 2-3 decades. What's really bad is that the police or individuals have a difficult time matching up photos with individuals. Do you remember folks from your junior high year book? Usually not really only the names. Well, they'll have 10 years of recorded imagery of visits. They'll have pics of when you were 6 walking around with mommy to when you are 16 and trying to buy cigs or beer to when you are 22 and actually buy a gun or beer. They'll be able to string it all together and once they do, presto, they've got everything that you've ever bought at a walmart.
I don't even want to think how long most of those tasks would take with current hardware. With DVRs, we might be able to keep a month of security records. All other operations on that data is most likely difficult. In 10-20 years, it may be much more likely though.
Interesting idea, except that face recognition is just not accurate enough.
In fact, I would comment that it may never be accurate enough for what you propose : I don't always recognize the faces of my own friends in photos. The human 'face' can be altered, obscured, distorted, lit differently, aged, scarred in countless ways that would prevent this software from being able to be certain enough to auto-evict people from wal mart.
Actually, that's the beauty of it. They don't have to do face recon to ID most of the time. O.k. to keep banned criminals out they do. As long as they can follow individuals through the store, that would be good enough. You then tie it to one of two things. A purchase or a vehicle. Most Walmart parking lots have 4-5 entrances, so you'd need license plate scanners at each one of those entrances so they'd use that as a fairly unique ID to tie you with something physical. Walmart doesn't need the DMV. They could just make an educated guesses. Trust me face recon may be bad, but license plate scanner tech has gotten really good lately. It just needs to be cheap enough for your average store to want to add it as an 1K additional security part. Last time that I checked, they cost around 20K. That's far to much.
Maybe I watched too much CSI and "X Files". But couldn't someone build a national DNA registry by going through our trash or recycling bins?
Nah, too difficult. It'd be much easier to develop and give the tech for average store video cameras to ID their customers and let the stores to most of your leg work. Do you have any idea what percentage of the nation that walmart could ID with that tech? Say they tie your recording with your cash, credit, or check payment. Two out of the 3 of those will give them ID on you. Well, if you've paid in cash, they just let their recorders follow you to your form of transportation. Which would either be bus or car. They record the as much vehicle info as they can and attach it to your video record. It's got to be automatic without any human involvement. After 6 months, a single walmart could ID a good chuck of the residents of that town.
That doesn't even get into if walmart decides to dump all that info to Walmart HQ and cross reference it. Imagine if those walmart greeters actually did keep the people out of walmart that were nationally banned from walmart. If you've ever caused an incident or shop lifted within a walmart you get banned and go on their black list. Today it would take you being arrested and the police to find out that you've been previously banned from the store and add that as an additional charge to what ever your arrest was. With this tech, they could scan everyone walking into the entry and have a automated voices/holograms say welcome "x" or "You've been banned from this chain please exit the premises." If you don't leave ASAP, then they summon the local cops. Laws generally only reach nationally, Walmart could apply that to every walmart on the globe. ;)
I use walmart as the example that people recognize as the largest store that could have plenty or R&D to develop this in house. It could be any national chain. If the video recording industry properly develops it, then it could be every gas station/small business/ or certain video recording usage companies. Customers don't have a clue what kinda of video recording that stores use. What if there was the small business anti-theft alliance, to do this instead of walmart? You'd see people that would try to fight walmart or other large national chains be glad of small businesses going after local crime.
At first I thought "No way am I going to let them take blood from me if I'm arrested!", but after reading the article all they do is swab the inside of your cheek. It really is less invasive than fingerprinting.
I've been fingerprinted twice, once after being arrested and once after applying for a federal job. The first time was the worst, the machine couldn't read my print AT ALL, so the officer tried pressing harder. That registered a faint image of a finger print. So they gave me some gel to clean my fingers, that did nothing to help so the officer continued to press harder and harder. We finally got one print to show up after a few minutes when the officer forced all of his body weight onto my finger. ONE PRINT, then it was on to the next 9 fingers...
Second time didn't require as much force, but we had other issues, my finger wasn't rolling right. The person operating the machine had to do each finger 5+ times to get the machine to actually accept the print.
Sounds like you got some one that's lousy with prints. If you ever need your prints done for a job interview, ask for crime scene to do it. I work with an ex crime scene guy and there are only 3-4 crime scene folks around here that are well versed and practiced at taking prints. From him, I wouldn't trust anyone else here to do it. (Well, they could but they don't have the practice to do it quickly and easily.)
I get shivers thinking about jail staff doing anything. Forget DNA or fingerprints. Our jail can't always match the right photo with the right booking. That happens lots of times. Now think about that. They've got them and take a picture, but the picture is for the wrong pulled up record. I'm sure that it happens with finger prints since they usually do the prints before filling out the crap on the card. (This is in case they screw up the prints they won't have to fill the form out again.)
Computers can't stop or slow poor human error data entry to the system. It takes a human that knows the individuals involved to check it! You or I could tell the easy obvious females on male records or that's a pic of a BF and its a WM record. But what if they mess up and switch two WM records? You've got to know what the 2 WM look like.
There are days that I'd like a national digital year book just so it would reduce the errors in our existing system.
So the only way to be safe is to keep building bigger weapons? I don't suppose youve ever looked into the 50 year immediately following WWII? Whats that meme round here "those that don't understand the mistakes of history bound to repeat them".
Not only is heading towards a cold war situation generally a bad idea, but given the current economic situation America doesn't stand a chance. China has a manufacturing capability much greater than America and given how china virtually owns America, you cant even hit china with trade sanctions.
Oh, I don't know. I figure that we turned out fairly well. I'd actually rather be in a cold war situation than most other war situations. I'm fascinated about how everyone assumes that China is our enemy or should be on the other side of the US. If anything, we'd be changing our social system to match their culture not the reverse. It's funny that folks want us to use damn near force to change their minds about how the world works.
My best advice to China on how to "conquer" the US is pay attention to Japanese Anime & Manga on the US cultural influence and thought. If China plays its cards right, it could have us begging to be made part of their country. Nah, wouldn't happen as we've been spending the last 200 years telling ourselves that we are the best country on the planet. Though they really should consider exporting daily sitcoms/soap operas/ just usual TV crap translated into English and sold abit cheaper than other sources to the US. They'd be utterly amazed at what they could get away with.
Actually, Obama is pursuing a very rational course here. In short, the US does not want to start an anti-satellite arms race, because we're already so far ahead in the satellite race - why reset the game board to zero? A couple of points to consider:
Nothing about an "anti-space" weapons ban would slow/stop killer stat weapons. Russia and China have 'em already. I'm sure India, Japan, and most of the EU could build 'em as well. When your average voter/citizen hears "anti-space weapon ban." They think of nuclear weapons in space, or orbital weapons platforms of some sort. It wouldn't stop some one from shooting down our existing resources from Earth.
The best thing that Iraq could have done to hurt the US would have been to shot down every single ID'd US satellite. It would have cost us billions to replace. Does anyone have any idea how much it would take to build 4-5 ships that just ID satellites and with the bare min tech to kill them. I'd think two navy ships one for each coast could decimate our geosynchronous satellites. Forget 9/11. If 9/11 had been aimed at killing off only our satellites rather than our civilians, then we'd be out billions if we wanted to replace them, and the lack of loss of life would have left us without cause to just invade a country, and it would have trashed most of our global force multipliers.
Ironically, we'd be more involved in space if we had 3rd world nations shooting down our satellites.
I can believe that, though he should really have been driving so as not to be that close in the first place. I rode horses most of my life, and when I came to learn to drive I found it very unsettling indeed not to have the ability to push the car sideways with my leg. Also, driving without wearing a helmet of some kind made me feel kinda naked.
Um, you can wear a helmet in a car if you really want to.
I think that Australia should just fine each involved company to the max. They shouldn't give any of them a "free pass." As long as they make the entire industry that tired to dance around the law by ignoring it the same or similar punishment, then it'd be mostly favor.
If the Australian government wants to make video games unprofitable for them, then more power to them. The effect could be an entire industry boycotting a country though. Or worse, use Australia as the "bad guys" in the next series of games instead of Nazis, USSR, evil Arabians, or space aliens.
We've got silly, but effective lobbies here in the US. I can't really complain about the ones that they are stuck with. If they, upset the Australian citizens enough, the Australian Citizens will make new lobbies to get easier or broader ratings.
Heck, I'm constantly stunned when I watch G & PG stuff now. It seems like stuff that's getting G would have gotten a PG, and the PG stuff would have been PG-13 back when I was a kid. PG-13 seems close to what the NC-17 used to be. NC-17 used to be the anime rating. Now they show that on cartoon network.
It's not that I care for me when I watch a stupid Disney G movie. I just liked knowing that standard was fairly kid safe. Heck, it seems like I can't even trust Veggie Tales to be kid safe. Well, atleast I can let them play my old school games. Nope, there's Smash TV and Metal Slug in there! O.k. we are sticking with FF. Nope, there is some language in there. O.k. less than 5 words through 5 series, but still.
When are we to stop comparing the US with EU states? If we were going to compare EU states to the US, then we should do it to individual US states.
I actually don't care if we are "behind" EU in general or "ahead" since no one apparently considers the EU a practical entity for comparison purposes.
Do you realize the fastest growing energy sector in the US? It's pretty much wind. Why? Because it's a pain in for the big boys to get oil, coal, gas, or nuclear approved and funded. Getting funding for wind power now is easy. The other thing is that wind power can be bought in very small slices. So if I as a big boy energy company had only a few million to spend on new production this quarter, well I can build a few wind power plants somewhere.
Heck the Perkins Plan was basically that the big energy boys have long since woken up and realized that the time is ripe to really leech the US to fund our grand energy change over. I haven't seen any real details of the Perkins Plan, but that it's been introduced by "the right players." Means that it'll reappear in certain lobby groups and the given states involved could in theory fund it themselves. (They'd want federal money, but sure 5-10 states could do it themselves.) Wind has issues just like everything else, but they are just as solvable as anything else.
I'm actually not that surprised to hear how much wind power we are building. Every few day or so it seems like I'm behind either a house on a semi or giant parts of a wind mill on a trailer. Wind will happen despite the government not because of it.
Then why is it being subsidized?
Short answer: politics.
Here's a hint. You are being leeched to pay for "renewable energy" built by your good ole "energy companies" of yore.
They aren't stupid. They know that the public doesn't want to fund to build coal, oil, or nuclear power. They know that the public has a thing for anything termed "renewable" even if it is more expensive than other sources. So they get us to pay as much of their costs as possible. Even when "renewable energy" becomes price competitive to build on its own, they'll still try to use subsidies as far as possible on general principles.
I can't blame the "energy companies." I'm iffy on blaming the politicians in this case. They've actually been doing what voters want. The problem is when to stop subsidies. That's one of those trick questions in politics.
I prefer looking at Hydro electric. 317,686 million Kilowatt-hours for the US versus 26,944 million Kilowatt-hours. Or about 4 times as much per person. I live in the Northwest though, and 82% of the power for the region is from Hydroelectric. The rest is either natural gas or nuclear and mostly for Seattle.
I get very mixed when I think of hydro electric. Most of those really big dams in the US that we make use of have been around seen before our living memory. So we don't really realize how much land area that they eat up. Make a trip over to China and ask how many people and how much has needed to be relocated due to one massive dam project.
Hydro-electric seems like the most land wasteful way for us to generate electricity. It has worked for the US because we built most of our really big ones before many were out there to move. They all have dis advantages. At least with wind power, you can still make use of much of the land for farming and such. Solar power can be mounted on top of existing structures or in existing yards. (Doing that wouldn't take up "additional" land area. It would only cut the need for other sources of energy.)
Nuclear or oil generally comes out way ahead when "land area" is your yard stick for energy use.
It's all in where we place our priorities
Korea is roughly 1/100th the size of the US. If we estimate a similar plan in the US based on size only, it would cost $2.46 trillion USD. The Korean government is paying 1.3 trillion of the 34.1 total (or roughly 4%). If the US government did something similar, it would be about $100 billion USD. If they were generous they might give 8% which would be about $200 billion USD. I wonder what might happen if the US gave its private telecom companies $200 billion to execute such a plan...
Didn't Clinton already give the telcoms billions in "tax cuts" so we'd have bad high width now? Your statement about land area is flippant at best. Why? Because we don't have to do the entire US. Heck, I live in AR, and I'd be thrilled to hear that in NY, LA, Dallas, or Houston that you could get 100 MBps at affordable to the average person prices. AR would be one the last states to upgrade. But NY, CA, TX, and FL major cities should have 100 MBps at cheap prices.
We don't. Every 6 months or so this issue comes up. What's worse is the state of our cell phone prices. Other places would have less than $10 per month due to competition. I'd be thrilled if any of those foreign cell phone companies came here. Heck, I don't even care if I had coverage throughout the nation as long as you could manage a single town's coverage at cheap prices. That's something that's impossible over here though.
It's one area where I actually don't mind city government trying to offer service. (It can hardly do worse.)
What is the more correct conclusion, is when the system is failing but has potential, you review and alter the system so as to reduce the failure potential. Privatised for profit prisons will always be a failure at rehabilitation, as rehabilitation costs money and in reality eliminates the future profit potential of current inmates (no repeat offenders).
Corporations are simple amoral engines of greed, their priority is to charge as much as possible while spending the least amount possible, hence locking up convicted inmates in the cheapest way possible that they are legally able to get away with. So low cost guards basically low IQ thugs in uniform who often derive perverted sexual fulfilment from abusing people, rather then properly trained correctional (note the term) services officers, which of course would 'cost' a corporation two to three times as much, where as of course repeat offenders only cost the public ten to one hundred times that in damages, pain and suffering, so corporate profits first the publics interest last and keep those returning profits from repeat offenders coming in.
Um, you are confusing why most folks want prisoners to be sent to prison. They don't want rehabilitation. They want punishment. They want these prisoners dropped into a prison/hole and never to be let back into their society ever again. They don't want to pay for individuals to try to brain wash them into being better citizens. That's what education and religion are for and it's failed in these cases. It's to late for that. It isn't to late to hire similar minded citizens that haven't broken the law to put them in charge of the punishment of the prisoners though. That's why people get upset when they hear that prisoners are living a soft life and aren't being harshly punished in prison.
I'm mixed on it myself. I'd rather build a single prison arcology and everyone that commits a crime in the rest of the US gets sent to the arcology. (I'd not have any prison guards or such except to prevent folks leaving.) It's one of those things where as long as I don't ever have to be aware of what the conditions are like within said arcology are like than I just don't care. If the arcology is mostly self supporting, than we can just send our rejects there.
Unfortunately, you're right. There's likely no 100% effective way to prevent the smuggling of items into prisons.
Say you invent a magical contriband detector that always sees any item you want on a person. All it takes is to bribe the person operating the machine, and it becomes useless. Make a machine that's totally automated and decides for itself, and you're getting dangerously close to Skynet.
Oh please, it doesn't take skynet. All it takes is to treat everyone entering/exiting the said prison to be treated to the same entry requirements/searches as the prisoners. If it were required for everyone entering a prison to strip, change into visitor, worker, or prisoner cloths and leave all other belongings in a locker, then you'd slow/stop alot of that. You'd also want to record the entire session as well and make smuggling anything into prison a crime. (And not have the prison workers be the ones monitoring the videos.) This would mean if any given visitor, prison worker, or prisoner was videoed smuggling anything into the prison, then the same actions would be taken towards the individuals. (Sure, I doubt that would ever happen.)
I also understand that it's not all about the games. In fact, the most unconscionably EULAs usually are on corporate software. But I talk about games primarily because I know games, I used to love games, and I'm genuinely losing interest in one of my favourite hobbies because of how the customer is being treated.
I know computer games can be fun, but they can be highly annoying to setup/use. That's why the bulk of my gaming library is PS2. If I want to play something, I just stick it in the PS2, see the sony logo, the game company logo, the splash screen/intro movie, then hit new game/continue.
Now on just about any free computer game that my kids want to play. It's install/upgrade flash. It's "freely" register with us before we let you touch our "free game." It's be annoying, jump through a few hoops, and then we can start on the tech. specs if your machine isn't even good enough for the program. I've avoided computer games for awhile because it's always been a mystery if any given game would work decently in my computer. Contrast that with any video game console. If I want a PS2, Wii, or DS game, I see the damn logo at wal-mart and know that the game will always "just" work.
After working as the IT fix-it guy at work, it is nice not too worry about that crap at home as well. Sure, I miss out on some things like WOW, but I've still got a stack of games that I've yet to play through that don't cost me per month, or that annoy me too much to put the damn disc in the machine. When I have to create an account or register to play a console game, that's pretty much when I'll decide to stop playing console games.