I rode a $120 Walmart bike to pieces in an hour on a mild wooded trail.
They took it back, and I spent four times as much at a bike shop on a schwinn. (This was before the name got bought by pacific bicycles, and started appearing at walmart.)
I've beat the crap out of that thing ever since on some nasty trails, and I've only really had to do routine maintanence on it. One part broke outright, but the bike shop fixed it for free.
It's been said that it takes a rich man to buy cheap goods, and in a lot of cases (ie, walmart goods) it's true.
Walmart stuff breaks so often on you that you need to buy things alot more frequently. If you spent two or three times as much at the outset on an item, and occasionally maintained it, you'd never have to replace it.
That's why I buy very, very few things at walmart. Stuff were the durability is hard to screw up (and even then they suprise me from time to time.) I just don't want to keep rebuying the same things.
Externally, the Soviet shuttle design appeared to be a copy of the American. But that's as far as that went. Buran had no engines for a start, it was strictly a payload for Energia. Certainly the engineers who created Buran looked at the American shuttle when they were coming up with the general principle, but in the same way that an aircraft designer looks at other aircraft.
One could say that Airbus copied Boeing because airliners all look pretty similar. One would be an idiot to make that comment though, the reality is that they are vastly different beasts.
So, you're calling me an idiot because I pointed out that the Russians made a space glider that's a copy of an american product?
The thing looks externally like the shuttle, it has no engines, probably uses aerlerons like every other aircraft & manuvering thrusters in space, little is known about it's never-tested life support- so you're basically telling me that the only thing the russians did for the Buran that was special was make it fly home by itself.
Color me unimpressed. If the Russians didn't even bother to put engines on it, the entire project is a dumbed down copy of a shuttle with autopilot, and little in the way of innovation.
Like I said before, this isn't the project to use when you explain how much you loved the soviets.
Funny you say that when the subject of conversation is a copy of an American project. Or do you suppose that the shuttle/buran geometry is the only way to do the job?
Not to say the russians didn't make some good stuff, but this isn't the best choice to discuss it on.
Since I'm no longer a poor college student, when I build my next computer I've decided I'm going to go ahead and pay microsoft for vista.
However, if they disable my poor college student era computer in the meantime, and I have to buy the license for that, I'll much less inclined to pay for an upgrade. On the other hand, I may go ahead and pay microsoft the copy I have now anyway.
I would, if properly convinced the defendant was guilty, fine him thus:
$3 for every song on his computer ($1 Itunes price, $2 punitive), minus $36 for every physical CD he owned ($3 a song, figure an average of 12 songs a CD).
It's enough to make the kid feel pain for violating the law, without being absurd. While a $20,000 judgement against you would suck, it's not unpayable.
Of course, a $20k judgement may not make such a law suit a net financial loss for the RIAA, but they can cry me and the rest of the Jury a river.
Also remember that the Jury is the ultimate arbriter of both the defendant and the law- even if the law says he's to be fined $1000 per song or such nonsense, a jury does not have to follow that in setting an award.
I work for a generating station, and every so often our 345 kiloVolt lines are serviced by helicopter.
Live.
The helicopter approaches the line, the technician attaches a conductive strap from a distance to equalize the potential of the helicopter, technician, and line, and then does whatever he needs to do.
Again, on a live 345 kiloVolt line at thousands of amps.
When he's done the helicopter pulls some distance away, he takes off the equalizing lanyard, and goes about to whereever needs to be worked next.
Nice, trying to pin all these statistics of death that you pulled out of your ass personally on a fellow slashdot poster.
More on this later.
I myself am not a communist, but it is absurd to treat it like heretical doctrine and you're the Catholic Church.
You seem to defend it as if you take it rather personally
Like I iterated in my first post, that would be akin to ascribing a death toll for "democracy", an ideal does not kill people. People do, and corrupt governments are made of people.
But you see, certain ideals lend themselves much more easily to tyranny and murder, and communism is a fantastic example of that. The thing is, for communism to work on a national scale, you can't have anyone 'opt out'- that is decide "screw communism, I own my property and the results of my efforts, and I will sell either for the most anyone will give me."
Those kinds of people are a huge obstacle to a communist nation- they'll pay good people more than communist government enterprises would provide, and they will benefit themselves first before their fellow man. (Note that this is a good thing- no poor person has ever given you a job, have they?)
On the other hand, the most productive of a nations people are often those who are self-interested, so it wouldn't do to have them leave- then you'd have a country run top to bottom by those whose organization and production skills are of lesser quality, to put it in the kindest terms.
So what do you do with dissenters? Murder them, or put them in gulags where death would almost be preferable. Furthermore, communist goverments have shown that central planning is a failure as well- this killed millions more due to starvation.
Such as:
Pol Pot
Out of a population of approximately 8 million people, Pol Pot's regime killed one-quarter. The Khmer Rouge targeted Buddhist monks, Western-educated intellectuals, people who appeared to be intelligent (for example, individuals with glasses), the crippled and lame, and ethnic minorities like ethnic Laotians and Vietnamese. They were thrown into the infamous S-21 camp for interrogation.....Property became communal, and education was dispensed at communal schools. Pol Pot's regime was extremely harsh on political dissent and opposition. Torture was widespread. In some instances, throats were slit as prisoners were tied to metal bed frames....The casualty list from the civil war, Pol Pot's consolidation of power, and the later intervention by Vietnam is disputed. Credible Western and Eastern sources [1] put the death toll of the Khmer Rouge at 1.6 million. A specific source, such as a figure of three million deaths between 1975 and 1979, was given by the People's Republic of Kampuchea. Fr Ponchaud suggested 2.3 million--although this includes hundreds of thousands who died prior to the CPK takeover; the Yale Cambodian Genocide Project[2] estimates 1.7 million; Amnesty International estimated 1.4 million; and the United States Department of State, 1.2 million. Khieu Samphan and Pol Pot, who could be expected to give underestimations, cited figures of 1 million and 800,000, respectively. The CIA estimated that there were 50,000 to 100,000 executions.
Early researchers of the number killed by Stalin's regime were forced to rely largely upon anecdotal evidence, and their estimates range as high as 60 million.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, hard evidence from the Soviet archives finally became available, and many of the earlier, higher estimates became more difficult to sustain. For example, the archives record that about 800,000 prisoners were executed (for either political or criminal offences) under Stalin's regime, while another 1.7 million died of privation in the Gulags and some 352,000 perished durin
So a terrible president got elected, does it therefore follow that democracy is a failure? how many people have died at the hands of "democratic governments" over the thousands of years since democracy became a popular choice? Is that really a fault of the ideal of "democracy"?
Don't make an absurd argument and expect me to research your answers for you. There's 100 million people dead at communisms feet since Marx and Engels came to the scene a little over a century ago, and true believers like you can still be found.
The conversation isn't about capitilism, it's about communism. I have no interest in discussing any of the numerous flaws in western societies. You will not put me on the defensive, because my point is that communism leads to misery and murder. You cannot prove otherwise and weakly seek to engage in some sort of relative debate of governments, when I hold the debate is well settled.
Don't give me crap about any party line or the brainwashing of Americans about communism. The mountains of corpses from every attempt at a communist society speaks volumes about communism, more than any jingonistic American textbook from the past 60 years possibly could.
Your precious but unworkable ideals are not worth the lives of even one more person, nor even a papercut on him. The lives of the citizens of any nation are not your playthings for yet another murderous social expirement.
If you don't actually believe communism is viable, then nevermind what follows....
This isn't how a Communist country is supposed to be run. There isn't supposed to be any "tuition fees" for education. There isn't supposed to be competition dividing people into two classes (one worthy of secondary education, one not). In a perfect Communist society, I was born to do something and as long as I work hard and do it, I get the exact same education you get. I haven't seen one good thing coming from China's "Communist" party. It seems the only parts of Communism that China kept are the parts that favor the government!
You seem to be speaking as if such as a 'perfect communist society' or anything close to it is possible.
Over 100 million people dead in the last century due to communist governments, and the fact that only misery can be found where communism is even close to properly implemented, tells us all quote well that COMMUNISM IS A FAILED IDEOLOGY.
Just to be clear, history has show us quite well that IT CANNOT WORK.
I don't even know why communism is even seriously debated as a possible form of government. History has shown us otherwise quite clearly.
Btw, China is communist in name only nowadays.
Communes can function perfectly fine, as small, relatively isolated self-selected and enforced societies. Anything tried on a nationwide scale- we've seen the results of that time and time again, and it's not good.
Expected response from communists:
The right people haven't been in charge yet!
Yeah, sure, keep thinking that's the only problem.
BTW, i am perfectly aware of the flaws of capitilism, but that's not really the subject of debate right now.
I don't agree with this at all. A gas engine is what, 15% efficient? Well it has GOT to be easier to get a large power plant to be more efficient than that than thousands of little engines
New combined cycle plants have a thermal efficiency of 59%. The 25 year old design of the nuclear power plant I work at is 35% thermally efficient or so. If I remember correctly, mitsubishi heavy industries makes a 100,000 hp diesel engine that ran at 100 rpm and was 50% efficient.
The other factors you'd have to multiply in are transmission efficiency, charging efficiency of the batteries, discharge efficiency, and electric motor efficiency. That being said, it can't be hard to beat an ICE at 15%.
This was news a few years ago when some folks got an electric pump installed to assist their failing heart, and their OEM heart recovered to the point where the pump was no longer needed.
Fantastic they discovered stems cells, but the heart repairing itself when relieved of load is not news.
(btw, I don't remember the name of the device used when they discovered this, but it was basically a small, simple liquid pump installed next to the heart. They didn't try to mimic a pulse, figuring it was unneccesary. They were right.)
They already do product placement on the Sapranos, occasionally in a blazingly obvious manner.
I recall one time specifically where Camilla and Tony where commenting on how nice a car the Cadillac Escalanche (or some GM vehicle) was, while sitting around watching TV and it's ad 'happened' to come up.
You can bet that every cereal they eat, every beverage they drink, every brand name you can clearly identify in any scene paid to be there.
I don't object to it personally, except on the rare occasion it's shoe-horned in.
On the other hand, such an advertising strategy would never work for Battle Star Gallactica or any number of shows.
Ack, you're right, I mentally wandered from the thread topic to government survillence in general lately.
That being said, the leakers comprimise anti-terror operations for the reasons I've stated in this sub thread, and should be found out and shut down. Seeing who the reporters (who broke the story) talked to is a perfectly reasonable investigative method.
This story is a non-starter really, and only in the lefty land of slashdot could the entire posting populus be so blinded by Bush hatred to not see that.
They're a couple of loons with bigger aspirations than they have capabilities. The miniscule danger they pose surely does not warrant (no pun intended) the surrender of our privacy and freedom. I'm sure 9/11 scared the crap out of you - it certainly shook me up - but that's no excuse for giving up every last ounce of freedom you've got in exchange for the promise of security.
I'm not scared, I just want them hunted down and killed. Anger would be more descriptive.
You're scared of the surveillence required to do such might, theoretically possibly be used against US citizens who are not engaged in war against the US.
You're scared of theoretical abuses, and I want proven threats hunted down and killed.
I do not consider it surrendering my rights to allow the government to sift through records anyone can purchase to find connections to known terrorists.
I do not consider it surrending my rights when the president uses his constitutional power to wage war (don't go into semantics with me on 'war', that's trite.) to monitor people who have been caught chatting with known enemies of the US, even if those enemies happen to be communicating wholly within the US. I do not consider it surrendering my rights when the authorization to perform those survelliences is given by the presidents constitutional authority to wage war, and not FISA, a construct of Congress, who does not have the constitutional authority to wage war.
Should such surveillence ever be used in a common criminal case, it would be thrown out as a violation of the fourth amendment, and any information gained as the result of such surveillence would also be thrown out as 'fruits of a bad tree.'
You and your ilk are desperately thrashing about for anything President Bush does that you can hold up and say to the rest of us (on the right) "See he's evil!." It's a rather tired line, truly, and everyone of these stories has been met with the Presidents approval rating going up, not down.
Not because the rest of us are sheep, but because we don't have our heads up our asses looking for every single possible reason to hate the president. No, they aren't a significant threat, but they shouldn't be tolerated either, or allowed to grow into a significant threat. This kind of surveillence has already saved the Brooklyn bridge, and probably a few other targets we haven't heard about. Go forth and use google, and find the brooklyn bridge story.
Yeah, lots of people on the right aren't happy with the president either, but not for the same reasons you despise him. And on this, you and your kind are simply wrong and appear very desperate for any dirt on the president. Sadly, your kind is also found in great numbers on slashdot.
You seem to believe that these techniques are only being used on certain really bad people. How do you know this? Are you privvy to some government knowledge that the rest of us 99.9% aren't? How am I, a normal every day citizen, supposed to know this?
You aren't supposed to know the particulars. You are not entitled to know every facet of everything the government does to protect us.
Why should be obvious, but I'll spell it out for you.
If everyone knows precisely what the government is doing to pursue our self-proclaimed enemies, those enemies know as well. If the know the methods being used to pursue them, they can change their behavior to thwart such methods.
The people who are performing this surveillence are accountable to their superiors, who are accountable to the President. The president is accountable to Congress, who can impeach him, and pretty much no one else at this point.
Congress is of course ultimately accountable to you and I through re-elections.
That's the way it works, and I'm suprised you need this civics lesson.
You and your kind see this as citizens surrendering their liberties to obtain a small promise of security.
I see this as you being concerned with the rights of people whose stated objective is to kill us.
If stories start to surface about an incorrectly intercepted phone call being used to prosecute some petty criminal, then maybe I'll get concerned.
That being said, there are tons of examples of abuse of federal power that are in compliance with current law.
For example, confiscation of personal property under drug war laws without 4th amendment due process. Federal power (roe vs wade) over abortion when no such power is given under the constitution.The ATF performing military style raids over paperwork that's out of order. Even local state and city police engaging in dangerous no-knock warrants so they can get some petty conviction on drug charges.
But I don't hear about that from you, I hear self-rightous whining and bed wetting over survelience of our enemies who happen to be within our border. Yeah, the government has to cast a wide net to catch anything, and that includes shifting through the phone records of US citizens who are law-abiding or common criminals to get the very few that wish to make war against us.
I will trust them to do that until they show that they abuse that power, and not just because it's possible they might at some point in the future. There's no other way for it to work.
Moreover, I would not grant the courtesy of access to civilian courts for those that want to make war against us.
Zack Moussai should have come before a military tribunal and been hung as a traitor long ago, not put through some circus of a public court. It's good enough that he will spend the rest of his life isolated in a federal supermax prison, but he took himself out of the criminal judiciary when he decided to engage in war against the US.
How do you know? Where is the accountability? I don't, and it's not to us.
Again, we are just assholes on the internet. Our knowing the details and workings of a particular program make those programs ineffective.
Template A (note to editors: to be used after every terrorist atrocity): "Angry family members, experts and opposition politicians demand to know why complacent government didn't connect the dots."
Template B (note to editors: to be used in the run-up to the next terrorist atrocity): "Shocking new report leaked to New York Times for Pulitzer Prize Leak Of The Year Award nomination reveals that paranoid government officials are trying to connect the dots! See pages 3,4,6,7,8, 13-37." -- Mark Steyn
You're not really clear on the concept of 'Enemy', are you?
And you haven't got any clue on what it takes to deal with an enemy in our midst, either. There are agents hostile to the US and all it's citizenry among us. They seek to make war on the United States. They are not citizens, they are enemies or traitors on our soil, like a japanese 'tourist' in WW2 scoping out San Francisco for good bombing targets.
Now, I'm not 100% on board with everything the government tries to sell as 'fighting terrorism', but I'll be damned if I'm gonna get worked up because we're monitoring the phone calls of someone in the US who has connections to know terrorists. The NSA doesn't give a shit that you ordered a che guearra T-shirt and hang out at ANSWER rallies 'speaking truth to power.' They don't care that whenever some new leak comes out of the CIA you're furiously typing away on your blog about how much this adminstration sucks and is the most evil thing since hitler killed a puppy for fun. They have more important things to do.
You know, hunt down people who want to kill us all
No, they aren't a substantial threat, and statistically you'll probably die some other way, you're right. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be hunted down and killed anyway. Would you let a rabid dog wander around town because it probably won't bite you?
This isn't some crackhead looking for his next fix. This isn't some worthless gangbanger getting gunned down by some other worthless gangbanger (~50% of murders). This isn't some piece of white trash who went too far with his latest wife beating. This isn't some crazy woman who drowned all her kids.
These are people who have made the cold, conscious decision that you need to die, and they work with others who feel the same, and they are funded by countries or entities who are hostile to us. That makes it war, and that makes their agents on our soil or elsewhere enemies who should be treated as such. Don't bring up the Geneva Convention, a reciprical agreement they never signed it and they certainly don't abide by.
Non-sequitir. Bad anaolgy. Really, do I have to explain this shit to you?
The journalists in question participated in a crime. The fact that they write for a newspaper does not make them special and above investigation for their participation in a crime.
This will require non-IT college students to learn about strong encrytion methods and the importance of using them, a lesson that will help them later on in life. It might even prompt some whiz-kids to come up with something even the NSA can't break.
I'm sure that would be lots of fun, until a warrant is obtained for whatever you have hanging around that's encrypted. Then if you don't give up the key you'll just sit in jail under a contempt of court order.
At least if you get sentenced, you'll get out of jail eventually.
Of course, encryption may keep the eye of the NSA from falling on you in the first place if you engage in activites... ahem... 'of interest', but if you're of sufficient interest by other means, encryption does you no good.
Oh, so you are describing again what I think is wrong with democracy, where the group you describe are the elected representatives. Yeah, but we can get rid of them under our system when we tire of them. Besides, in the US we all think our politicians are scum anyway, which I think is a healthy attitude to have. IIRC, in England they actually refer to their politicians as 'their betters' with no irony. England is a country of Buearocracy run amok if there ever was one.
The autoritative meritocracy that is currently rulling China under the guise of "communist party" is outperforming all the current democractic governments for some reason, including the government of India, which had a very lucky draw with some good leaders.
It's true their growth has been tremendous the past decade or so, but we'll see how long that trend lasts long term. I suspect their authoritarinism may hit a wall in national development at some point. Only time will tell.
And if you want to claim anything about US success, let me remind you that all China needs to do to kill US economy is to put all the US dollars they hold in circulation all at once.
If they do that, they devalue the dollar, correct? That means our goods become much cheaper and hence other countries are more likely to buy them. Moreover, imports become very expensive for the US, meaning we'll buy less from overseas.... including China.
It's a double edged sword, and no country can screw us without screwing themselves economically.
Slashdot Mirror
I rode a $120 Walmart bike to pieces in an hour on a mild wooded trail.
They took it back, and I spent four times as much at a bike shop on a schwinn. (This was before the name got bought by pacific bicycles, and started appearing at walmart.)
I've beat the crap out of that thing ever since on some nasty trails, and I've only really had to do routine maintanence on it. One part broke outright, but the bike shop fixed it for free.
It's been said that it takes a rich man to buy cheap goods, and in a lot of cases (ie, walmart goods) it's true.
Walmart stuff breaks so often on you that you need to buy things alot more frequently. If you spent two or three times as much at the outset on an item, and occasionally maintained it, you'd never have to replace it.
That's why I buy very, very few things at walmart. Stuff were the durability is hard to screw up (and even then they suprise me from time to time.) I just don't want to keep rebuying the same things.
Externally, the Soviet shuttle design appeared to be a copy of the American. But that's as far as that went. Buran had no engines for a start, it was strictly a payload for Energia. Certainly the engineers who created Buran looked at the American shuttle when they were coming up with the general principle, but in the same way that an aircraft designer looks at other aircraft.
One could say that Airbus copied Boeing because airliners all look pretty similar. One would be an idiot to make that comment though, the reality is that they are vastly different beasts.
So, you're calling me an idiot because I pointed out that the Russians made a space glider that's a copy of an american product?
The thing looks externally like the shuttle, it has no engines, probably uses aerlerons like every other aircraft & manuvering thrusters in space, little is known about it's never-tested life support- so you're basically telling me that the only thing the russians did for the Buran that was special was make it fly home by itself.
Color me unimpressed. If the Russians didn't even bother to put engines on it, the entire project is a dumbed down copy of a shuttle with autopilot, and little in the way of innovation.
Like I said before, this isn't the project to use when you explain how much you loved the soviets.
Funny you say that when the subject of conversation is a copy of an American project. Or do you suppose that the shuttle/buran geometry is the only way to do the job?
Not to say the russians didn't make some good stuff, but this isn't the best choice to discuss it on.
Since I'm no longer a poor college student, when I build my next computer I've decided I'm going to go ahead and pay microsoft for vista.
However, if they disable my poor college student era computer in the meantime, and I have to buy the license for that, I'll much less inclined to pay for an upgrade. On the other hand, I may go ahead and pay microsoft the copy I have now anyway.
Eh, we'll see how it goes.
I would, if properly convinced the defendant was guilty, fine him thus:
$3 for every song on his computer ($1 Itunes price, $2 punitive), minus $36 for every physical CD he owned ($3 a song, figure an average of 12 songs a CD).
It's enough to make the kid feel pain for violating the law, without being absurd. While a $20,000 judgement against you would suck, it's not unpayable.
Of course, a $20k judgement may not make such a law suit a net financial loss for the RIAA, but they can cry me and the rest of the Jury a river.
Also remember that the Jury is the ultimate arbriter of both the defendant and the law- even if the law says he's to be fined $1000 per song or such nonsense, a jury does not have to follow that in setting an award.
IANAL but you can read about Jury Nullification yourself.
Why is this modded funny? It's absolutely true.
I work for a generating station, and every so often our 345 kiloVolt lines are serviced by helicopter.
Live.
The helicopter approaches the line, the technician attaches a conductive strap from a distance to equalize the potential of the helicopter, technician, and line, and then does whatever he needs to do.
Again, on a live 345 kiloVolt line at thousands of amps.
When he's done the helicopter pulls some distance away, he takes off the equalizing lanyard, and goes about to whereever needs to be worked next.
More on this later.
You seem to defend it as if you take it rather personally
Like I iterated in my first post, that would be akin to ascribing a death toll for "democracy", an ideal does not kill people. People do, and corrupt governments are made of people.
But you see, certain ideals lend themselves much more easily to tyranny and murder, and communism is a fantastic example of that. The thing is, for communism to work on a national scale, you can't have anyone 'opt out'- that is decide "screw communism, I own my property and the results of my efforts, and I will sell either for the most anyone will give me."
Those kinds of people are a huge obstacle to a communist nation- they'll pay good people more than communist government enterprises would provide, and they will benefit themselves first before their fellow man. (Note that this is a good thing- no poor person has ever given you a job, have they?)
On the other hand, the most productive of a nations people are often those who are self-interested, so it wouldn't do to have them leave- then you'd have a country run top to bottom by those whose organization and production skills are of lesser quality, to put it in the kindest terms.
So what do you do with dissenters? Murder them, or put them in gulags where death would almost be preferable.
Furthermore, communist goverments have shown that central planning is a failure as well- this killed millions more due to starvation.
Such as:
Pol Pot
The more you know....
Joseph Stalin
So a terrible president got elected, does it therefore follow that democracy is a failure? how many people have died at the hands of "democratic governments" over the thousands of years since democracy became a popular choice? Is that really a fault of the ideal of "democracy"?
Don't make an absurd argument and expect me to research your answers for you. There's 100 million people dead at communisms feet since Marx and Engels came to the scene a little over a century ago, and true believers like you can still be found.
The conversation isn't about capitilism, it's about communism. I have no interest in discussing any of the numerous flaws in western societies. You will not put me on the defensive, because my point is that communism leads to misery and murder. You cannot prove otherwise and weakly seek to engage in some sort of relative debate of governments, when I hold the debate is well settled.
Don't give me crap about any party line or the brainwashing of Americans about communism. The mountains of corpses from every attempt at a communist society speaks volumes about communism, more than any jingonistic American textbook from the past 60 years possibly could.
Your precious but unworkable ideals are not worth the lives of even one more person, nor even a papercut on him. The lives of the citizens of any nation are not your playthings for yet another murderous social expirement.
You seem to be speaking as if such as a 'perfect communist society' or anything close to it is possible.
Over 100 million people dead in the last century due to communist governments, and the fact that only misery can be found where communism is even close to properly implemented, tells us all quote well that COMMUNISM IS A FAILED IDEOLOGY.
Just to be clear, history has show us quite well that IT CANNOT WORK.
I don't even know why communism is even seriously debated as a possible form of government. History has shown us otherwise quite clearly.
Btw, China is communist in name only nowadays.
Communes can function perfectly fine, as small, relatively isolated self-selected and enforced societies. Anything tried on a nationwide scale- we've seen the results of that time and time again, and it's not good.
Expected response from communists:
The right people haven't been in charge yet!
Yeah, sure, keep thinking that's the only problem.
BTW, i am perfectly aware of the flaws of capitilism, but that's not really the subject of debate right now.
I don't agree with this at all. A gas engine is what, 15% efficient? Well it has GOT to be easier to get a large power plant to be more efficient than that than thousands of little engines
New combined cycle plants have a thermal efficiency of 59%. The 25 year old design of the nuclear power plant I work at is 35% thermally efficient or so. If I remember correctly, mitsubishi heavy industries makes a 100,000 hp diesel engine that ran at 100 rpm and was 50% efficient.
The other factors you'd have to multiply in are transmission efficiency, charging efficiency of the batteries, discharge efficiency, and electric motor efficiency.
That being said, it can't be hard to beat an ICE at 15%.
So, is it just me and my fiancee who play "The Sock Game" with our cat?
Anyone else?
(For those trying to figure it out, it's not perverted, but just a weeeee bit cruel)
This was news a few years ago when some folks got an electric pump installed to assist their failing heart, and their OEM heart recovered to the point where the pump was no longer needed.
Fantastic they discovered stems cells, but the heart repairing itself when relieved of load is not news.
(btw, I don't remember the name of the device used when they discovered this, but it was basically a small, simple liquid pump installed next to the heart. They didn't try to mimic a pulse, figuring it was unneccesary. They were right.)
They already do product placement on the Sapranos, occasionally in a blazingly obvious manner.
I recall one time specifically where Camilla and Tony where commenting on how nice a car the Cadillac Escalanche (or some GM vehicle) was, while sitting around watching TV and it's ad 'happened' to come up.
You can bet that every cereal they eat, every beverage they drink, every brand name you can clearly identify in any scene paid to be there.
I don't object to it personally, except on the rare occasion it's shoe-horned in.
On the other hand, such an advertising strategy would never work for Battle Star Gallactica or any number of shows.
It's amusing to be called a pussy by an anonymous coward.
Ack, you're right, I mentally wandered from the thread topic to government survillence in general lately.
That being said, the leakers comprimise anti-terror operations for the reasons I've stated in this sub thread, and should be found out and shut down. Seeing who the reporters (who broke the story) talked to is a perfectly reasonable investigative method.
This story is a non-starter really, and only in the lefty land of slashdot could the entire posting populus be so blinded by Bush hatred to not see that.
They're a couple of loons with bigger aspirations than they have capabilities. The miniscule danger they pose surely does not warrant (no pun intended) the surrender of our privacy and freedom. I'm sure 9/11 scared the crap out of you - it certainly shook me up - but that's no excuse for giving up every last ounce of freedom you've got in exchange for the promise of security.
I'm not scared, I just want them hunted down and killed. Anger would be more descriptive.
You're scared of the surveillence required to do such might, theoretically possibly be used against US citizens who are not engaged in war against the US.
You're scared of theoretical abuses, and I want proven threats hunted down and killed.
I do not consider it surrendering my rights to allow the government to sift through records anyone can purchase to find connections to known terrorists.
I do not consider it surrending my rights when the president uses his constitutional power to wage war (don't go into semantics with me on 'war', that's trite.) to monitor people who have been caught chatting with known enemies of the US, even if those enemies happen to be communicating wholly within the US. I do not consider it surrendering my rights when the authorization to perform those survelliences is given by the presidents constitutional authority to wage war, and not FISA, a construct of Congress, who does not have the constitutional authority to wage war.
Should such surveillence ever be used in a common criminal case, it would be thrown out as a violation of the fourth amendment, and any information gained as the result of such surveillence would also be thrown out as 'fruits of a bad tree.'
You and your ilk are desperately thrashing about for anything President Bush does that you can hold up and say to the rest of us (on the right) "See he's evil!." It's a rather tired line, truly, and everyone of these stories has been met with the Presidents approval rating going up, not down.
Not because the rest of us are sheep, but because we don't have our heads up our asses looking for every single possible reason to hate the president. No, they aren't a significant threat, but they shouldn't be tolerated either, or allowed to grow into a significant threat. This kind of surveillence has already saved the Brooklyn bridge, and probably a few other targets we haven't heard about. Go forth and use google, and find the brooklyn bridge story.
Yeah, lots of people on the right aren't happy with the president either, but not for the same reasons you despise him. And on this, you and your kind are simply wrong and appear very desperate for any dirt on the president. Sadly, your kind is also found in great numbers on slashdot.
You seem to believe that these techniques are only being used on certain really bad people. How do you know this? Are you privvy to some government knowledge that the rest of us 99.9% aren't? How am I, a normal every day citizen, supposed to know this?
You aren't supposed to know the particulars. You are not entitled to know every facet of everything the government does to protect us.
Why should be obvious, but I'll spell it out for you.
If everyone knows precisely what the government is doing to pursue our self-proclaimed enemies, those enemies know as well. If the know the methods being used to pursue them, they can change their behavior to thwart such methods.
The people who are performing this surveillence are accountable to their superiors, who are accountable to the President. The president is accountable to Congress, who can impeach him, and pretty much no one else at this point.
Congress is of course ultimately accountable to you and I through re-elections.
That's the way it works, and I'm suprised you need this civics lesson.
You and your kind see this as citizens surrendering their liberties to obtain a small promise of security.
I see this as you being concerned with the rights of people whose stated objective is to kill us.
If stories start to surface about an incorrectly intercepted phone call being used to prosecute some petty criminal, then maybe I'll get concerned.
That being said, there are tons of examples of abuse of federal power that are in compliance with current law.
For example, confiscation of personal property under drug war laws without 4th amendment due process. Federal power (roe vs wade) over abortion when no such power is given under the constitution.The ATF performing military style raids over paperwork that's out of order. Even local state and city police engaging in dangerous no-knock warrants so they can get some petty conviction on drug charges.
But I don't hear about that from you, I hear self-rightous whining and bed wetting over survelience of our enemies who happen to be within our border. Yeah, the government has to cast a wide net to catch anything, and that includes shifting through the phone records of US citizens who are law-abiding or common criminals to get the very few that wish to make war against us.
I will trust them to do that until they show that they abuse that power, and not just because it's possible they might at some point in the future. There's no other way for it to work.
Moreover, I would not grant the courtesy of access to civilian courts for those that want to make war against us.
Zack Moussai should have come before a military tribunal and been hung as a traitor long ago, not put through some circus of a public court. It's good enough that he will spend the rest of his life isolated in a federal supermax prison, but he took himself out of the criminal judiciary when he decided to engage in war against the US.
How do you know? Where is the accountability?
I don't, and it's not to us.
Again, we are just assholes on the internet. Our knowing the details and workings of a particular program make those programs ineffective.
Wow, you're making a lot of assumptions there, and presenting them as facts.
That's true of 99.999% of all posts on slashdot, and this thread is no exception.
Never forget we're all just assholes with opinions and no power, and this is just sport.
Template A (note to editors: to be used after every terrorist atrocity): "Angry family members, experts and opposition politicians demand to know why complacent government didn't connect the dots."
Template B (note to editors: to be used in the run-up to the next terrorist atrocity): "Shocking new report leaked to New York Times for Pulitzer Prize Leak Of The Year Award nomination reveals that paranoid government officials are trying to connect the dots! See pages 3,4,6,7,8, 13-37." -- Mark Steyn
You're not really clear on the concept of 'Enemy', are you?
And you haven't got any clue on what it takes to deal with an enemy in our midst, either.
There are agents hostile to the US and all it's citizenry among us. They seek to make war on the United States. They are not citizens, they are enemies or traitors on our soil, like a japanese 'tourist' in WW2 scoping out San Francisco for good bombing targets.
Now, I'm not 100% on board with everything the government tries to sell as 'fighting terrorism', but I'll be damned if I'm gonna get worked up because we're monitoring the phone calls of someone in the US who has connections to know terrorists. The NSA doesn't give a shit that you ordered a che guearra T-shirt and hang out at ANSWER rallies 'speaking truth to power.' They don't care that whenever some new leak comes out of the CIA you're furiously typing away on your blog about how much this adminstration sucks and is the most evil thing since hitler killed a puppy for fun. They have more important things to do.
You know, hunt down people who want to kill us all
No, they aren't a substantial threat, and statistically you'll probably die some other way, you're right. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be hunted down and killed anyway. Would you let a rabid dog wander around town because it probably won't bite you?
This isn't some crackhead looking for his next fix. This isn't some worthless gangbanger getting gunned down by some other worthless gangbanger (~50% of murders). This isn't some piece of white trash who went too far with his latest wife beating. This isn't some crazy woman who drowned all her kids.
These are people who have made the cold, conscious decision that you need to die, and they work with others who feel the same, and they are funded by countries or entities who are hostile to us. That makes it war, and that makes their agents on our soil or elsewhere enemies who should be treated as such. Don't bring up the Geneva Convention, a reciprical agreement they never signed it and they certainly don't abide by.
Your analogy sucks.
But hey, you'd make a great dhimmi.
Non-sequitir. Bad anaolgy. Really, do I have to explain this shit to you?
The journalists in question participated in a crime. The fact that they write for a newspaper does not make them special and above investigation for their participation in a crime.
Investigative techniques being used to investigate?
Why is this even a story, save for the fact that it's yet another leak?
I'm sure that would be lots of fun, until a warrant is obtained for whatever you have hanging around that's encrypted. Then if you don't give up the key you'll just sit in jail under a contempt of court order.
At least if you get sentenced, you'll get out of jail eventually.
Of course, encryption may keep the eye of the NSA from falling on you in the first place if you engage in activites
looks like a war....
smells like a war....
sounds like a war....
costs like a war....
congress pays for it like a war....
Maybe it is, actually, a war?
(Quack, Quack. How does this inane argument keep getting modded up?)
Oh, so you are describing again what I think is wrong with democracy, where the group you describe are the elected representatives.
Yeah, but we can get rid of them under our system when we tire of them. Besides, in the US we all think our politicians are scum anyway, which I think is a healthy attitude to have. IIRC, in England they actually refer to their politicians as 'their betters' with no irony. England is a country of Buearocracy run amok if there ever was one.
The autoritative meritocracy that is currently rulling China under the guise of "communist party" is outperforming all the current democractic governments for some reason, including the government of India, which had a very lucky draw with some good leaders.
It's true their growth has been tremendous the past decade or so, but we'll see how long that trend lasts long term. I suspect their authoritarinism may hit a wall in national development at some point. Only time will tell.
And if you want to claim anything about US success, let me remind you that all China needs to do to kill US economy is to put all the US dollars they hold in circulation all at once.
If they do that, they devalue the dollar, correct? That means our goods become much cheaper and hence other countries are more likely to buy them. Moreover, imports become very expensive for the US, meaning we'll buy less from overseas.... including China.
It's a double edged sword, and no country can screw us without screwing themselves economically.