I don't understand the argument that there is a danger that hypersonic weapons will be developed to carry nukes. That weapon already exists, it's called an ICBM. You might have heard of them. ICBM reentry vehicles are already hypersonic [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercontinental_ballistic_missile] . Some reach peak speeds of mach 20. That's one of the reasons why they're so hard to intercept.
Also, BTW, the Russian's already have hypersonic anti-ship missiles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-800_Oniks, mach 4.5) so apparently the goal of this treaty would be to stop us from developing weapons that already exist? Or just maybe to prevent the U.S. from developing weapons to match Putin's stuff? Sounds like a worthy goal to me. Maybe we should step this up to block the development of all "chemically powered weapons" (ie, guns and missiles) because they sound dangerous as well.
PS: The fact that hypersonic missiles are hard to intercept doesn't make them any more of a "1st strike weapon" than what we already have.
"Energy Policy, International Journal of vehicle Design, Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, Population and Development Review, Contemporary Economic Policy all look as though they have peer review"
All of Lovin's articles are Policy Papers, not scientific or technical papers. All his publications are geared towards politics. He does not now and has never written any technical papers (that I'm aware of) which is why his assertions about "Don't worry, it's reasonable to build this super-grid" are not reasurring. There is no reason to believe he has any detailed knowledge of how the grid works beyond a laymans idea of "it distributes energy". Hand-wavium is not serious research. He did not present a serious model of how it would work. Even basic questions about actual peak/average/minimum power generation using readily available data goes unanalyzed. Power distribution? What's that?
It's not that properly disributing renewable power can't work or is a bad idea but how difficult it would be to achieve near 100% effectiveness is a hard question he's not seriously trying to answer. A little storage and little backup power goes a loooong way to making the design a lot easier. His desire to upfront declare such things unnaceptable smacks of fanatacism not practical problem solving.
"The breakdown of U.S energy research and development subsidies reported by the US DOE is roughly 60% for nuclear, 25% to fossil fuels and 15% to sustainable energy sources."
Given that you didn't bother to provide any kind of link for that information, I'll give one for 2010 (which is much more relavent). http://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/ For 2010, and the percentages are . (FY 2010, Millions, just for R&D):
Total energy-specific subsidies and support including: Direct expenditures; Tax Expenditures; R and D; DOE loan guarantee, Fed & RUS Electricity (FY 2010, in millions) are:
America’s middle-class is in “demise”. Uh-huh. Data from the Census Bureau show that assertion to be wrong. Reckoned in 2009 dollars (that is, adjusted for inflation) the percent of households in America that are poor or lower-middle-income is going down while the percentage that are upper-middle-income and wealthy is rising.
In 1975 the percent of U.S. households that earned annual incomes of less than $75,000 was 80.6; in 2009 the the percent of households that earn less than $75,000 annually is 68.4.
For each of the Census Bureau’s five income categories below $75,000, the percentages of households earning these relatively modest incomes have fallen, while for each of the two higher-income categories the percentagesof households earning incomes in each of these categories have risen.
This data also underestimate the improvement over the past few decades in ordinary Americans’ economic well-being. The reason is that these data do not account for the decrease in the number of people living in the typical American household; nor do they account for the increase in the portion of employee compensation paid in the form of fringe benefits.
Every major enviromental group in the US opposes reprocessing nuclear fuel...so yeah, that is a problem for doing reprocessing in the US. There are individual environmentalists who disagree, and good for them, but the overwhelming enviromentalist opinion is against it and they have a lot of lobbying power.
You said, "But if I signed my real name to this, I'd be on a terror watchlist by the end of the week and you and I both know it. ". So you sound pretty sure. Saying, "How can anyone know" is more honest but it runs contrary to what you originally wrote.
The one thing that's been amusing about the whole Manning case is how consistent his Defender’s argument has been. From the very beginning, the idea that "Manning is Not Guilty" has accepted as axiomatic, regardless of whatever evidence was provided and all arguments had to end with that conclusion.
At first, “Everyone” knew that Manning was just a scapegoat for Wikileaks and anyone who claimed otherwise was obviously A Fascist Thug. Then as evidence came out show he had released documents, well of course he was just a whistleblower and anyone who claimed otherwise was obviously working for the Man.
When it turns out he released tens of thousands of documents he hadn’t even read and thus can’t be whistleblowing, then The Defenders invent bizarre new legal doctrines about how since the documents went to WikiLeaks not a foreign government, it’s not illegal. Or Manning is a Journalist! And so no laws apply to him, after all the legal expert Assange said so. And anyone who claimed otherwise was obviously A Fascist Thug.
Now that Manning’s own lawyers are giving up on that argument, let’s go to claims of mistreatment to get him off.
When that fails I’m sure some of the older claims of insanity will come back. Or we’ll go to the claim that HE created the Arab Spring, not the millions of oppressed Arabs who’ve suffered for decades. Nah, they’re just a sideshow to Manning. Or another favorite, Governments shouldn’t be able to have anything secret at all. That’s why the Defenders all worked so hard to defend Scooter Libby. Free Scooter Libby! they cried. And of course there is the strange issue ofis this all proof that Obama is actually A Fascist Thug?
Stop stop stop. If you think that electronics simply "stop working completely" when they overheat then you need to stop pontificating on a subject you don't understand. Also, the machines were made by ES&S, not Diebold, so statements by a Diebold CEO seem oddly out of place. So apparently your "Occam's Razor" answer is to randomly scream "CONSPIRACY!".
PS: as an aside, Diebold never been found guilty of any attempt to manipulate votes, just general incompetence, and the CEO statement wasn't about Diebold voting machines.
PS: This is a well-known fact (I don't live in TX but I knew about it) and is actually pretty well covered by the regular media, but somehow retech wants to blame it on Buuuuuussssshhhhh. That's an impressive display of logic & research on your part retech, I look forward to more thoughtful analysis on your part.
People on slashdot always laugh their asses off when they read about normal people over reacting to things like computer viruses (should I wear gloves when touching the keyboard?) but then do the same thing when reading about drones.
Planes have been around for over 100 years and the laws covering them have been around for almost that long. Drones are just planes, they're covered by the same basic set of laws that planes are covered by now. OMG, somebody might fly over my house and take a picture of me naked! Can I shoot it down? Don't they have to give me the flight plan before it can cross my airspace.
Hey, guess what, planes can fly over your house RIGHT NOW and take a picture. Why are your panicking now, it's been a possibility for decades. And the police? Didn't you ever notice those police planes & helicopters that have been flying for decades? What the heck do you think they've been doing. Yeah, they're watching you. And of course RC people have been using video drone planes as well for years. Sheesh.
No they don't have to give you a flightplan. No you can't shoot it down. No you can't blind it. No you don't own it if it crashes on your land (although you can get compensation). No they can't film you frolicking naked in your yard & sell the video.
"2. The owners of the private property never objected to the protester's presence there. In order for being on someone else's property to be considered trespassing, the owner has to not want you to be there (e.g. if I walk through a church parking lot and nobody complains, that's not trespassing)."
The owner's have protested about OWS multiple times. The Police have simply stalled in their actions.
"3. The private property in question was actually required, by city ordinance, to be open to the public at all times, so even if they had objected they weren't allowed to do anything about it."
City Ordinance's also make it illegal to camp there. So they're clearly violating that.
Look, the reality is that if I or any other Joe Schmoe just showed up at a NY park, setup a tent, and said we're protesting _______________ and plan to stay until ____________ is achieved, the police would have you out within a few hours, at most. Far from being singled out for unfair treatment, OWS is getting especially kind treatment. The idea that they're peacefully protesting and therefore whatever they do is automagically legal is absurd and 99% of the people advocating that on slashdot would never want that made into law. Would you want peaceful anti-abortion zealots to be able to squat indefinitely in any clinic they don't approve of? Can I setup a camp in front of Old Faithful in Yellowstone because people don't respect The Bears properly? Can I and 100 friends setup camp in your house until the US government "does something" about Australian mistreatment of aboriginals?
Having a right to assemble doesn't magically make all other laws irrelevant, just like Freedom of the Press doesn't mean I can steal paper & ink to put out my newspaper. It certainly has never been interpreted that way in the past and even the people who support OWS today don't really want it to change the laws. They just want the laws changed for them only. Their attitude is, "I like OWS, so whatever they do is legal."
"I find it unconscionable that it is possible to patent or copyright something that is absolutely critical to the fundamental processes of democracy."
Paper ballots, secret ballots, & counting aren't patented so we already have what is critical to democracy.
The problems that New Jersey is having with Sequoia don't seem to be related to patent law. Anything patented in the U.S. is automatically made public knowledge and the basic implementation details are part of the patent itself. The problem here involves Non-Disclosure Agreements, Trade Secrets, and general bad contract writing on New Jersey's part. That is what is making it hard for them to verify the voting machines.
This incident confirms that one of the biggest problems the states are having is a general lack of competence on how to properly purchase this kind of equipment. The business people at Sequoia/Diebold/etc are screwing the states to the wall on these ridiculous contracts.
If you go to their website they have the following statement:
Our Claim
Orbo produces free, clean and constant energy - that is our claim. By free we mean that the energy produced is done so without recourse to external source. By clean we mean that during operation the technology produces no emissions. By constant we mean that with the exception of mechanical failure the technology will continue to operate indefinitely.
The sum of these claims for our Orbo technology is a violation of the principle of conservation of energy, perhaps the most fundamental of scientific principles. The principle of the conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created or destroyed, it can only change form.
Because of the revolutionary nature of our claim, not only to the world of science but to the world in general, Steorn issued a challenge to the scientific community in August 2006 to test our technology and report their findings. The process of validation that has resulted from this challenge is currently underway, with results expected by the end of 2007. That's a claim to a perpetual motion machine. To their credit, they aren't hiding the claim, they're throwing the claim right out to the public. The whole thing is obviously a con-job to get money from suckers with more $$$ than sense. I really wish slashdot wouldn't post this kind of nonsense.
"this is another case of classic US unilateralism"
Whoa, whoa, there cowboy. This is not "US unilateralism" this is "US is playing by the accepted international rules". The WTO has rules and procedures for trade and resolving disputes. That's the whole reason why it was created. It's always been a multi-national organization. China read the rules and ASKED TO JOIN KNOWING THE RULES AHEAD OF TIME. They knew what they were getting into. They agreed "Yes, you can sue us in WTO courts". And now it's happening, not a big shock. The US has complained to them for years and years about pirating, and they didn't change. So now the US is suing. The US isn't breaking the system, this is how the system is supposed to work. Claiming that this is "unilateralism" is like saying I'm a "unilateralist" if my neighbor smashes my car window and I sue him in court. That's not acting unilaterally, that's acting within the system. The US has been successfully sued under WTO rules many times, where the countries that sued us unilateralists? So don't cry foul now when China's being hit.
And for all the people who say, "How dare the US sue over issue X, don't they realize they're violating Y and Z?", you need to learn more about the WTO and trade disputes. Essentially all the member of the WTO break the rules to some degree or another and the more they trade the more they break. That's just the reality of trade. Countries just have to pick and choose their fights in the WTO. The reason why they added a court system to the WTO rules was because in the past trade disputes always break down into an endless series of arguments about which country is more "justified" in their actions. It's like some bad argument between married couples:
Husband: "What happened to your car? Why is it in the shop? Did you forget to check the oil again?"
Wife: "Well I don't know, I was too busy picking up Timmy at school because you forgot to get him!"
Husband: "Well I forget things because I can't sleep due to your snoring all night."
Wife: "Snoring? How can you hear me snoring when you're drunk all the time?"
Husband: "I drink so I don't have to hear you nag."
Wife: "I wouldn't nag if you'd just fix the porch."
Husband: "I never wanted to get that porch in the 1st place."
Wife: "Well I never wanted to move here"
Etc.
Trade disputes go the same way. There's an endless list of potential complaints with both sides trying to act more righteous. Let's just try to stick to the subject at hand. China signed the treaties including treaties on pirating, China is violating the treaties, the US is using the dispute mechanism that China agreed to. It's all on the up and up.
The transition of music from a purely "performance" form of art to a recorded form that could be sold started before Edison. The first step was the invention of musical notation and mass printing of sheet music. Which, btw, was under copyright and the royalties from same acted as a kind of grandparent to the modern RIAA. The second step was the invention of the player piano, a mechanical device that could playback "recorded" music.
"Yea, let's big up the US who were the ones who were the ones who funded the Nazis with their economic aid to Germany"
The US government provided essentially zero economic aid to Germany after the Nazis came to power. The US still had trade relations with them, but so did France, England, USSR, etc. Germany had far more trade within Europe than outside of Europe.
"as well as being the biggest Nazi appeasers who were willing to surrender the whole of Europe to avoid fighting the fascist regime they built up because they were so afraid of communism."
The US wanted to stay out of European wars in general. Given that we had gone into The Great War with the promise of "fighting to end wars" the cynical political maneuvering and general lack of good will after the war helped to create a climate of isolationism in the US. A lot of people couldn't see how US involvement in Europe had really made the world better, so why not stay out? The countries that were actually _in_ Europe consistently had appeased Germany for many years. Why would the US be more guilty of appeasement than Mexico or Brazil? Perhaps they simply viewed it as not their business.
"Even as Nazi bombs fell on London, US companies still sold arms and machine parts to Germany, and Ford motor company built tanks for Germany."
Control of Fordwerke, the German subsidiary of Ford, had passed to the German Government by WWII. An article at the ADL website, http://www.adl.org/Braun/dim_13_2_ford.asp/, gives a good overview.
"The USA never even declared war on Germany, it was Germany that declared war on the US first."
Interesting but a weak criticism. The US had just been bombed by Japan, declaring war on them was the logical response. Immediately declaring war on Germany would have been...quite odd actually.
A lot of people seem to misunderstand what the role of the FCC has been. They set standards for what is broadcast over the air only. They handle spectrum allocation, energy levels within frequencies, and sometime signal protocals. They have never mandated how the receiver works and they don't mandate how the trasmitter works. All they mandate is what actually goes over the air. That's how transmission standards are normally set. The NTSC standard mandates nothing about how TV sets are built, or TV cameras, only what you actually transmit over the air. The FCC broadcast flag is a complete anomaly because it mandates the details of how the receiver works. This is contrary to past standards where manufacturers were free to implement a solution anyway they liked. And yes, it did work wonderfully. It's similar to how the HTML standard defines how to format the data, but it doesn't make any requirements about how the program has to be written, and it certainly isn't illegal to make a browser that doesn't support a "mandated" feature.
The problem that you're seeing with the FCC being manipulated by industry is so common economists even have a term for it, "Regulatory Capture".
In 1945 the only CIA-like organization in the US government was the OSS, which was busy disbanding at the end of the war. The CIA was later established in 1947 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_S ervices or http://www.osssociety.org/. So your timeline is off. In addition, no former member of the Gestapo has been a member of the CIA, if you know of one please try to provide _some_ king of proof. I'm sure there were former Gestapo member who did provide info the CIA about the Soviet Union/Eastern Europe after the war. That's to be expected given the history of the war.
"The problem with Tivo is the subscription service. First, the cost, second the fact that you need a phone line."
You don't need a phone line. I run mine over a 802.11g network hooked to a cable modem.
"the subscription fee is a hidden cost for buyers."
*shrug* I'm not sure I'd call it "hidden". Tivo does offer continous updates, scheduling, and basically keeps my box working for me so you're getting something for the subscrition. They used to offer a lifetime subscription for those not wanting to deal with subscription fees.
"They ought to figure out a way to make it work just like a standard VCR easily and foolproof"
To be blunt, I already had several VCRs and I bought a Tivo because it was way way superior in how it worked. Seriously, the difference in usability is like night and day.
"license the technology to anybody and everybody who wants to build it into their existing devices. TV's could have a DVR built in for an extra $100. Why not?"
Tivo has tried to license it but to little success. As someone who works in consumer electronics design I know that the OEM default position is that they should pay ZERO licencing fees. If their back is against the wall they might offer $0.20 per device. Beyond that they go nuts. $0.20 is not a viable business strategy for Tivo.
Although the Arrow is a super-popular plane with many people, the myths about it gets blown a bit out of proportion and reasons why it was cancelled are complicated.
Realistically, it isn't clear the US government really had a policy, particularly for or against, the Arrow. On one hand, there were some who wanted BOMARC to be used instead (and the poster is right that BOMARC was a failure). On the other hand, the US Military: * Provided test equipment and support for the development of the Arrow (a B-47 bomber was provided to test an engine.) * Offered to donate a fire support system when the original planned ASTRA system fell apart. * Offered to pay for several Arrows for the RCAF in order to keep the program running.
IMO the reasons it was cancelled was that: * It was a really expensive project & plane. The most expensive project Canada had ever done and the most expensive interceptor in the world. Realistically that was the wave of the future but the Canadian government got sticker shock. * The project wasn't done when it was cancelled. The designers would, of course, tell you the Arrow would be perfect yet nobody, the politicians in particular, could be sure. Realistically, actual performance/cost numbers were still uncertain. * Nobody else seemed interested in buying it (due to cost). * Everyone had gone "missile crazy" in the 50's 60's. Many people seriously suggested that airplanes would soon be obsoleted by missiles. That turned out to be BS but it was widely believed. Early versions of the Mirage & Phantom fighters didn't even carry guns (much to their detriment) this was so widely believed.
In any event had the Arrow been completed and used it probably would have been more expensive than anticipated, wouldn't have worked as well as web-advocates claim, would have never seen combat, and would have been retired as a beloved part of Canadian aerospace history.
"...when rich folk do scamming, like the Savings & Loan scandal, Enron, Worldcom, and so on, people don't get so upset. "
Have you been living in a cave for the past couple of years? There have been thousands and thousands of articles, hundreds of books, countless tv news-show segments, and at least one movie about Enron alone. Plus, the heads of Enron and Worldcom are all fighting court battles to stay out of jail and a lot of people did go to jail over the S&L crisis. I don't doubt they deserved their treatment, but to say people aren't upset at them simply isn't true. They've gotten at least 100x the coverage that the 419 people have gotten.
Whenver marijuana comes up on the net the same thing happens, "the bullshit piles up to fast you need wings to keep above it."
You here the same conspiracy theory everytime, about hemp paper being a "danger" to pulp paper.
I have two major problems with this. First off, nobody who pushes this theory ever bothers to provide any proof. What serious proof has anyone in this thread offered? "Reefer Madness: The Musical" doesn't count kiddies. You just hear the same accusation over and over until everyone just assumes it's true. I say bah to that.
The second problem is that hemp paper had been around for a long frickin' time before the 1930s. Why in the world would it _suddenly_ become a danger to pulp? Pulp manufacturers had been competing succesfully for a long time. Hemp is still produced around the world, has it displaced pulp newsprint? Nope.
On a side issue, people try to argue that "big business" wouldn't like to legalize it because "everyone would just grow there own!". I say HAH to that. People don't even bother to make their own jello anymore! Making your own beer is easy, but most people don't bother. In the end most people would buy marijuana at the store if they could, just like they buy everything else. Even if 50% of the weed smoked was home grown (a fantastic over-estimation) there would still be a huge market for the stuff.
PS: I favor legalization, but that doesn't mean I have to buy into the paranioa.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't understand the argument that there is a danger that hypersonic weapons will be developed to carry nukes. That weapon already exists, it's called an ICBM. You might have heard of them. ICBM reentry vehicles are already hypersonic [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercontinental_ballistic_missile] . Some reach peak speeds of mach 20. That's one of the reasons why they're so hard to intercept.
Also, BTW, the Russian's already have hypersonic anti-ship missiles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-800_Oniks, mach 4.5) so apparently the goal of this treaty would be to stop us from developing weapons that already exist? Or just maybe to prevent the U.S. from developing weapons to match Putin's stuff? Sounds like a worthy goal to me. Maybe we should step this up to block the development of all "chemically powered weapons" (ie, guns and missiles) because they sound dangerous as well.
PS: The fact that hypersonic missiles are hard to intercept doesn't make them any more of a "1st strike weapon" than what we already have.
"Energy Policy, International Journal of vehicle Design, Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, Population and Development Review, Contemporary Economic Policy all look as though they have peer review"
All of Lovin's articles are Policy Papers, not scientific or technical papers. All his publications are geared towards politics. He does not now and has never written any technical papers (that I'm aware of) which is why his assertions about "Don't worry, it's reasonable to build this super-grid" are not reasurring. There is no reason to believe he has any detailed knowledge of how the grid works beyond a laymans idea of "it distributes energy". Hand-wavium is not serious research. He did not present a serious model of how it would work. Even basic questions about actual peak/average/minimum power generation using readily available data goes unanalyzed. Power distribution? What's that?
It's not that properly disributing renewable power can't work or is a bad idea but how difficult it would be to achieve near 100% effectiveness is a hard question he's not seriously trying to answer. A little storage and little backup power goes a loooong way to making the design a lot easier. His desire to upfront declare such things unnaceptable smacks of fanatacism not practical problem solving.
"The breakdown of U.S energy research and development subsidies reported by the US DOE is roughly 60% for nuclear, 25% to fossil fuels and 15% to sustainable energy sources."
Given that you didn't bother to provide any kind of link for that information, I'll give one for 2010 (which is much more relavent). http://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/ For 2010, and the percentages are . (FY 2010, Millions, just for R&D):
Coal 663
Gas & Oil 70
Nuclear 1,169
Renewable 1,409
Grid 222
End-Use 832
Total energy-specific subsidies and support including: Direct expenditures; Tax Expenditures; R and D; DOE loan guarantee, Fed & RUS Electricity (FY 2010, in millions) are:
Coal 1,358
Natural Gas & Petroleum 2,820
Nuclear 2,499
Renewables 14,674
Smart Grid & Transmission 211
Conservation 6,597
End-Use 8,241
Which means Renewables and Conservation do quite well.
America’s middle-class is in “demise”. Uh-huh. Data from the Census
Bureau show that assertion to be wrong. Reckoned in 2009 dollars
(that is, adjusted for inflation) the percent of households in America
that are poor or lower-middle-income is going down while the percentage
that are upper-middle-income and wealthy is rising.
In 1975 the percent of U.S. households that earned annual incomes of
less than $75,000 was 80.6; in 2009 the the percent of households that
earn less than $75,000 annually is 68.4.
For each of the Census Bureau’s five income categories below
$75,000, the percentages of households earning these relatively modest
incomes have fallen, while for each of the two higher-income
categories the percentagesof households earning incomes in each of these
categories have risen.
This data also underestimate the improvement over the past few
decades in ordinary Americans’ economic well-being. The reason is
that these data do not account for the decrease in the number of
people living in the typical American household; nor do they account
for the increase in the portion of employee compensation paid in the
form of fringe benefits.
Every major enviromental group in the US opposes reprocessing nuclear fuel...so yeah, that is a problem for doing reprocessing in the US. There are individual environmentalists who disagree, and good for them, but the overwhelming enviromentalist opinion is against it and they have a lot of lobbying power.
You said, "But if I signed my real name to this, I'd be on a terror watchlist by the end of the week and you and I both know it. ". So you sound pretty sure. Saying, "How can anyone know" is more honest but it runs contrary to what you originally wrote.
Schizophrenia is not curable.
The one thing that's been amusing about the whole Manning case is how consistent his Defender’s argument has been. From the very beginning, the idea that "Manning is Not Guilty" has accepted as axiomatic, regardless of whatever evidence was provided and all arguments had to end with that conclusion.
At first, “Everyone” knew that Manning was just a scapegoat for Wikileaks and anyone who claimed otherwise was obviously A Fascist Thug.
Then as evidence came out show he had released documents, well of course he was just a whistleblower and anyone who claimed otherwise was obviously working for the Man.
When it turns out he released tens of thousands of documents he hadn’t even read and thus can’t be whistleblowing, then The Defenders invent bizarre new legal doctrines about how since the documents went to WikiLeaks not a foreign government, it’s not illegal. Or Manning is a Journalist! And so no laws apply to him, after all the legal expert Assange said so. And anyone who claimed otherwise was obviously A Fascist Thug.
Now that Manning’s own lawyers are giving up on that argument, let’s go to claims of mistreatment to get him off.
When that fails I’m sure some of the older claims of insanity will come back. Or we’ll go to the claim that HE created the Arab Spring, not the millions of oppressed Arabs who’ve suffered for decades. Nah, they’re just a sideshow to Manning. Or another favorite, Governments shouldn’t be able to have anything secret at all. That’s why the Defenders all worked so hard to defend Scooter Libby. Free Scooter Libby! they cried. And of course there is the strange issue ofis this all proof that Obama is actually A Fascist Thug?
Stop stop stop. If you think that electronics simply "stop working completely" when they overheat then you need to stop pontificating on a subject you don't understand. Also, the machines were made by ES&S, not Diebold, so statements by a Diebold CEO seem oddly out of place. So apparently your "Occam's Razor" answer is to randomly scream "CONSPIRACY!".
PS: as an aside, Diebold never been found guilty of any attempt to manipulate votes, just general incompetence, and the CEO statement wasn't about Diebold voting machines.
There are lot's of books on HDLs, but to get good results for non-trivial designs you also need to learn how to test them.
http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Testbenches-Functional-Verification-Edition/dp/1402074018 is a great guide to this.
Mexican drug cartels regularly threaten & kill reporters who talk about cartel violence. That's why you don't here much about it:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/15/world/americas/mexico-journalist/index.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/16/world/la-fg-mexico-narco-censorship-20100816
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/23/140745739/mexican-drug-cartels-now-menace-social-media
http://www.chicagonow.com/chicanisima-latino-politics-news-and-culture/2011/09/mexican-journalist-killed-for-using-social-media/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/20/mexico-newspaper-drug-cartels
PS: This is a well-known fact (I don't live in TX but I knew about it) and is actually pretty well covered by the regular media, but somehow retech wants to blame it on Buuuuuussssshhhhh. That's an impressive display of logic & research on your part retech, I look forward to more thoughtful analysis on your part.
People on slashdot always laugh their asses off when they read about normal people over reacting to things like computer viruses (should I wear gloves when touching the keyboard?) but then do the same thing when reading about drones.
Planes have been around for over 100 years and the laws covering them have been around for almost that long. Drones are just planes, they're covered by the same basic set of laws that planes are covered by now. OMG, somebody might fly over my house and take a picture of me naked! Can I shoot it down? Don't they have to give me the flight plan before it can cross my airspace.
Hey, guess what, planes can fly over your house RIGHT NOW and take a picture. Why are your panicking now, it's been a possibility for decades. And the police? Didn't you ever notice those police planes & helicopters that have been flying for decades? What the heck do you think they've been doing. Yeah, they're watching you. And of course RC people have been using video drone planes as well for years. Sheesh.
No they don't have to give you a flightplan. No you can't shoot it down. No you can't blind it. No you don't own it if it crashes on your land (although you can get compensation). No they can't film you frolicking naked in your yard & sell the video.
"2. The owners of the private property never objected to the protester's presence there. In order for being on someone else's property to be considered trespassing, the owner has to not want you to be there (e.g. if I walk through a church parking lot and nobody complains, that's not trespassing)."
The owner's have protested about OWS multiple times. The Police have simply stalled in their actions.
"3. The private property in question was actually required, by city ordinance, to be open to the public at all times, so even if they had objected they weren't allowed to do anything about it."
City Ordinance's also make it illegal to camp there. So they're clearly violating that.
Look, the reality is that if I or any other Joe Schmoe just showed up at a NY park, setup a tent, and said we're protesting _______________ and plan to stay until ____________ is achieved, the police would have you out within a few hours, at most. Far from being singled out for unfair treatment, OWS is getting especially kind treatment. The idea that they're peacefully protesting and therefore whatever they do is automagically legal is absurd and 99% of the people advocating that on slashdot would never want that made into law. Would you want peaceful anti-abortion zealots to be able to squat indefinitely in any clinic they don't approve of? Can I setup a camp in front of Old Faithful in Yellowstone because people don't respect The Bears properly? Can I and 100 friends setup camp in your house until the US government "does something" about Australian mistreatment of aboriginals?
Having a right to assemble doesn't magically make all other laws irrelevant, just like Freedom of the Press doesn't mean I can steal paper & ink to put out my newspaper. It certainly has never been interpreted that way in the past and even the people who support OWS today don't really want it to change the laws. They just want the laws changed for them only. Their attitude is, "I like OWS, so whatever they do is legal."
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"I find it unconscionable that it is possible to patent or copyright something that is absolutely critical to the fundamental processes of democracy."
Paper ballots, secret ballots, & counting aren't patented so we already have what is critical to democracy.
The problems that New Jersey is having with Sequoia don't seem to be related to patent law. Anything patented in the U.S. is automatically made public knowledge and the basic implementation details are part of the patent itself. The problem here involves Non-Disclosure Agreements, Trade Secrets, and general bad contract writing on New Jersey's part. That is what is making it hard for them to verify the voting machines.
This incident confirms that one of the biggest problems the states are having is a general lack of competence on how to properly purchase this kind of equipment. The business people at Sequoia/Diebold/etc are screwing the states to the wall on these ridiculous contracts.
"this is another case of classic US unilateralism"
Whoa, whoa, there cowboy. This is not "US unilateralism" this is "US is playing by the accepted international rules". The WTO has rules and procedures for trade and resolving disputes. That's the whole reason why it was created. It's always been a multi-national organization. China read the rules and ASKED TO JOIN KNOWING THE RULES AHEAD OF TIME. They knew what they were getting into. They agreed "Yes, you can sue us in WTO courts". And now it's happening, not a big shock. The US has complained to them for years and years about pirating, and they didn't change. So now the US is suing. The US isn't breaking the system, this is how the system is supposed to work. Claiming that this is "unilateralism" is like saying I'm a "unilateralist" if my neighbor smashes my car window and I sue him in court. That's not acting unilaterally, that's acting within the system. The US has been successfully sued under WTO rules many times, where the countries that sued us unilateralists? So don't cry foul now when China's being hit.
And for all the people who say, "How dare the US sue over issue X, don't they realize they're violating Y and Z?", you need to learn more about the WTO and trade disputes. Essentially all the member of the WTO break the rules to some degree or another and the more they trade the more they break. That's just the reality of trade. Countries just have to pick and choose their fights in the WTO. The reason why they added a court system to the WTO rules was because in the past trade disputes always break down into an endless series of arguments about which country is more "justified" in their actions. It's like some bad argument between married couples:
Husband: "What happened to your car? Why is it in the shop? Did you forget to check the oil again?"
Wife: "Well I don't know, I was too busy picking up Timmy at school because you forgot to get him!"
Husband: "Well I forget things because I can't sleep due to your snoring all night."
Wife: "Snoring? How can you hear me snoring when you're drunk all the time?"
Husband: "I drink so I don't have to hear you nag."
Wife: "I wouldn't nag if you'd just fix the porch."
Husband: "I never wanted to get that porch in the 1st place."
Wife: "Well I never wanted to move here"
Etc.
Trade disputes go the same way. There's an endless list of potential complaints with both sides trying to act more righteous. Let's just try to stick to the subject at hand. China signed the treaties including treaties on pirating, China is violating the treaties, the US is using the dispute mechanism that China agreed to. It's all on the up and up.
The transition of music from a purely "performance" form of art to a recorded form that could be sold started before Edison. The first step was the invention of musical notation and mass printing of sheet music. Which, btw, was under copyright and the royalties from same acted as a kind of grandparent to the modern RIAA. The second step was the invention of the player piano, a mechanical device that could playback "recorded" music.
"Yea, let's big up the US who were the ones who were the ones who funded the Nazis with their economic aid to Germany"
The US government provided essentially zero economic aid to Germany after the Nazis came to power. The US still had trade relations with them, but so did France, England, USSR, etc. Germany had far more trade within Europe than outside of Europe.
"as well as being the biggest Nazi appeasers who were willing to surrender the whole of Europe to avoid fighting the fascist regime they built up because they were so afraid of communism."
The US wanted to stay out of European wars in general. Given that we had gone into The Great War with the promise of "fighting to end wars" the cynical political maneuvering and general lack of good will after the war helped to create a climate of isolationism in the US. A lot of people couldn't see how US involvement in Europe had really made the world better, so why not stay out? The countries that were actually _in_ Europe consistently had appeased Germany for many years. Why would the US be more guilty of appeasement than Mexico or Brazil? Perhaps they simply viewed it as not their business.
"Even as Nazi bombs fell on London, US companies still sold arms and machine parts to Germany, and Ford motor company built tanks for Germany."
Control of Fordwerke, the German subsidiary of Ford, had passed to the German Government by WWII. An article at the ADL website, http://www.adl.org/Braun/dim_13_2_ford.asp/, gives a good overview.
"The USA never even declared war on Germany, it was Germany that declared war on the US first."
Interesting but a weak criticism. The US had just been bombed by Japan, declaring war on them was the logical response. Immediately declaring war on Germany would have been...quite odd actually.
*sigh*
A lot of people seem to misunderstand what the role of the FCC has been. They set standards for what is broadcast over the air only. They handle spectrum allocation, energy levels within frequencies, and sometime signal protocals. They have never mandated how the receiver works and they don't mandate how the trasmitter works. All they mandate is what actually goes over the air. That's how transmission standards are normally set. The NTSC standard mandates nothing about how TV sets are built, or TV cameras, only what you actually transmit over the air. The FCC broadcast flag is a complete anomaly because it mandates the details of how the receiver works. This is contrary to past standards where manufacturers were free to implement a solution anyway they liked. And yes, it did work wonderfully. It's similar to how the HTML standard defines how to format the data, but it doesn't make any requirements about how the program has to be written, and it certainly isn't illegal to make a browser that doesn't support a "mandated" feature.
The problem that you're seeing with the FCC being manipulated by industry is so common economists even have a term for it, "Regulatory Capture".
In 1945 the only CIA-like organization in the US government was the OSS, which was busy disbanding at the end of the war. The CIA was later established in 1947 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_S ervices or http://www.osssociety.org/. So your timeline is off. In addition, no former member of the Gestapo has been a member of the CIA, if you know of one please try to provide _some_ king of proof. I'm sure there were former Gestapo member who did provide info the CIA about the Soviet Union/Eastern Europe after the war. That's to be expected given the history of the war.
"The problem with Tivo is the subscription service. First, the cost, second the fact that you need a phone line."
You don't need a phone line. I run mine over a 802.11g network hooked to a cable modem.
"the subscription fee is a hidden cost for buyers."
*shrug* I'm not sure I'd call it "hidden". Tivo does offer continous updates, scheduling, and basically keeps my box working for me so you're getting something for the subscrition. They used to offer a lifetime subscription for those not wanting to deal with subscription fees.
"They ought to figure out a way to make it work just like a standard VCR easily and foolproof"
To be blunt, I already had several VCRs and I bought a Tivo because it was way way superior in how it worked. Seriously, the difference in usability is like night and day.
"license the technology to anybody and everybody who wants to build it into their existing devices. TV's could have a DVR built in for an extra $100. Why not?"
Tivo has tried to license it but to little success. As someone who works in consumer electronics design I know that the OEM default position is that they should pay ZERO licencing fees. If their back is against the wall they might offer $0.20 per device. Beyond that they go nuts. $0.20 is not a viable business strategy for Tivo.
Although the Arrow is a super-popular plane with many people, the myths about it gets blown a bit out of proportion and reasons why it was cancelled are complicated.
Realistically, it isn't clear the US government really had a policy, particularly for or against, the Arrow. On one hand, there were some who wanted BOMARC to be used instead (and the poster is right that BOMARC was a failure). On the other hand, the US Military:
* Provided test equipment and support for the development of the Arrow (a B-47 bomber was provided to test an engine.)
* Offered to donate a fire support system when the original planned ASTRA system fell apart.
* Offered to pay for several Arrows for the RCAF in order to keep the program running.
IMO the reasons it was cancelled was that:
* It was a really expensive project & plane. The most expensive project Canada had ever done and the most expensive interceptor in the world. Realistically that was the wave of the future but the Canadian government got sticker shock.
* The project wasn't done when it was cancelled. The designers would, of course, tell you the Arrow would be perfect yet nobody, the politicians in particular, could be sure. Realistically, actual performance/cost numbers were still uncertain.
* Nobody else seemed interested in buying it (due to cost).
* Everyone had gone "missile crazy" in the 50's 60's. Many people seriously suggested that airplanes would soon be obsoleted by missiles. That turned out to be BS but it was widely believed. Early versions of the Mirage & Phantom fighters didn't even carry guns (much to their detriment) this was so widely believed.
In any event had the Arrow been completed and used it probably would have been more expensive than anticipated, wouldn't have worked as well as web-advocates claim, would have never seen combat, and would have been retired as a beloved part of Canadian aerospace history.
"...when rich folk do scamming, like the Savings & Loan scandal, Enron, Worldcom, and so on, people don't get so upset. "
Have you been living in a cave for the past couple of years? There have been thousands and thousands of articles, hundreds of books, countless tv news-show segments, and at least one movie about Enron alone. Plus, the heads of Enron and Worldcom are all fighting court battles to stay out of jail and a lot of people did go to jail over the S&L crisis. I don't doubt they deserved their treatment, but to say people aren't upset at them simply isn't true. They've gotten at least 100x the coverage that the 419 people have gotten.
Whenver marijuana comes up on the net the same thing happens, "the bullshit piles up to fast you need wings to keep above it."
You here the same conspiracy theory everytime, about hemp paper being a "danger" to pulp paper.
I have two major problems with this. First off, nobody who pushes this theory ever bothers to provide any proof. What serious proof has anyone in this thread offered? "Reefer Madness: The Musical" doesn't count kiddies. You just hear the same accusation over and over until everyone just assumes it's true. I say bah to that.
The second problem is that hemp paper had been around for a long frickin' time before the 1930s. Why in the world would it _suddenly_ become a danger to pulp? Pulp manufacturers had been competing succesfully for a long time. Hemp is still produced around the world, has it displaced pulp newsprint? Nope.
On a side issue, people try to argue that "big business" wouldn't like to legalize it because "everyone would just grow there own!". I say HAH to that. People don't even bother to make their own jello anymore! Making your own beer is easy, but most people don't bother. In the end most people would buy marijuana at the store if they could, just like they buy everything else. Even if 50% of the weed smoked was home grown (a fantastic over-estimation) there would still be a huge market for the stuff.
PS: I favor legalization, but that doesn't mean I have to buy into the paranioa.