He said/meant they make no profit, he didn't say they made no income/revenue. Read his more complete statement...Jobs has one more reason not to be concerned about the competition. "The dirty little secret of all this is there's no way to make money on these stores," he says. For every 99 Apple gets from your credit card, 65 goes straight to the music label. Another quarter or so gets eaten up by distribution costs...at Time magazine
People say there is no cost to digital ditribution, but bandwidth, servers, backup systems, facilities, disaster recovery plans, and personell all cost money.
The 30 or so cents that Apple collects from each sale just about covers those costs. At some point economies of scale will allow Apple to start eeking out a profit from their share.
On your points: 1) Apple is actively negotiating for rights and fees in other countries. This is a headache in much of the world. I have no doubth that Apple has the infrastructure in place to roll out any country's service as soon as licensing is ironed out. 2) There are a BUNCH (over100) indie lables that just signed up for iTMS in the past month or two, we should start seeing indi music flood in to the service like a tsunami over the next few months. The indies are tripping over themselves to get on board with this store. on iTMS they are equals with the "big 5" in every respect. (on an interesting side note, I'm wondering if Apple will require all indies to use FairPlay, or will allow non DRM AAC files in the end). 3) DRM is not something I've not heard anyone seriously complain about. The few complaints/gripes I've read are from people who don't understand the rights you get from the store: You are free to use the music on any number of iPods (and what self respecting, RDF susceptible Mac user doesn't use an iPod or four), any number of CDs (which you can give away to friends and family) and in any movies or slide shows you create on DV, DVD, VCD, etc. all of this as long as it's not for commercial use. Apple's music license specifically allows me to make a copy of songs and give them away; permanantly! This would be considered piracy with a CD or cassette where one archive/backup copy is allowed and there is no secondary distribution/use allowed.
If people think that iTMS has restrictive DRM, I can't imagine how many complaints there must be about other services that charge per CD burn, or limit you to two or three burns of a song or don't allow use of the music in any of your personal movies, or limit you to one or two protable players, etc.
...You compress to a higher-quality-than-you-ever-had-in-AAC bitrate MP3 with no loss... Impossible. MP3 and AAC are two different models of audio compression. The only way to not loose quality would be to burn to CD, then rip to the same quality AAC with the same encoder software at the same settings, but minus the DRM. ANY change in compression on the re-encoding will yield loss, perhaps imperceptible, but it will be there.
I'm also thinking you don't understand the history of MP3 and AAC. The man who developed the MP3 perceptual compression techology later (something like a decade later) came up with a better model and developed AAC out of it. AAC has more sample points and more channels than MP3 format (48 vs 5). When the developer of both formats publicly states that AAC is a better sounding format than MP3, I'm willing to trust that statement.
Actually, it's more like less than 15 million in the RIAA's pockets. Other articles/sources state the breakdown is something like: 60% to RIAA (split between label and song writers) 2% to the artists remainder (38%) to Apple (minus of course the credit card processing percentage)
You've either responded to the wrong message, or your have completely failed to understand my point.
Simply STATING that Hussein must be "controlled" and unilaterally taking matters in to your own hands without any Constitutional basis or support of international law or concensus are two completely different things.
There is no crime in the former, and there is with the latter.
...This is important if for no other reason than that we have a concept of justice, that people should pay for their crimes... Please explain our concept of justice to the hundreds being held in Camp X-ray without being charged or tried with any crime. They have not broken any US Laws and were not captured in a war zone. (remember Congress NEVER issued a declaration of war that would make our troop actions in the Middle East legal).
Please explain our concept of justice to the thousands of Iraqi and Afgan civilians that we've bombed to death without any warning and without any legal cause.
Please explain our concept of justice that allows a sitting President to make known false statements in sworn testimony to Congress and not be impeached and tried for it.
People should pay for their crimes, and we should start with Bush for just purgery, violation of the Constitution and his oath to uphold it, and for his terrorist acts and tactics in foreign lands.
...He also helped subsidize the terrorists that attacked this country...
What are you talking about? The US government (despite trying desperately to do so) has found absoloutly no evidence that Saddam or the Iraqi government ever funded or consorted with Al Queda or any other "terrorist" group.
On the other hand, we have plenty of evidence that Saudi Arabia HAS directly funded, armed, aided and abedded known terrorist leaders and groups. When do we invade Saudi Arabia?
The "pot shots" as you call them that I take at the US President are simply requests for factual information that makes his stated case. To date I have not seen that ANYTHING that Bush stated as a reason for illegally invading Iraq to be true (no weapons, no terrorist support, no intent to harm neigbors).
Bush lied, he is a cad and a coward. If you think otherwise, then please link to official government press releases/information that provides me with this information. NOT press releases that say they have the information, but the actual information.
It was actually the idea of the British occupying forces to use chemical weapons to control the country of Iraq. It was standard proceedure for the British to use nerve gas against the remote towns when the tax monies were not sent in on time, or just randomly to "keep the people in line". Saddam simply continued the technique. Once Saddam was out of power (actually we didn't wait that long), the US started randomly bombing the people.
Randomly bombing Iraqis is a long and honored tradition. Saddam wasn't the first, and he wasn't be the last to do it.
The vast majority of "Linux" that people want to learn has nothing to do with Linux itself, but all the OTHER stuff that comes with a distribution; ie: editors, programming, web/mail servers, etc. You can do all of that on a Mac with OS X and the developer tools installed. Jaguar now even supports some of the APIs from Linux, making even more Linux-only software compile without alteration under Darwin (the Unix core of OS X).
Install OS X, and Fink and she'll have all the Apple GUI goodness, drivers for all the hardware, and all the power and flexibility of the Unix system under the hood (bash, sendmail, vi, perl, etc).
While I agree with your arguments, I would like to make a journalistic suggestion to you: check your facts before you publish. You shouldn't just accept the widely held, but wrong conceptions when you write.
The United States is not a Democracy. The constitution specifically states that the Federal Government shall be that of a Republic. We operate as a Republic (a highbred socialist/capitalist one) and there are (to my knowlege) no plans to change to a Democracy. In a Democracy, each and every citizen would have equal say in the running of the government. There would be no politicians or representatives. Ideas would sprout from the people and be voted on by the people. This is different from Anarchy, in that Democracy allows for the rule of law and the enforcement of law, Anarchy does not. We in the United States are just now beginning to reach a technological level where a Democracy could work from a logistical standpoint. Unfortunately the US media and the US schools are failing to educate/inform people in a manner that allows objective thought based on facts.
The issues you mention have absoloutly nothing to do with Mac OS, and everything to do with a machine not being secure if a malicious person has physical access to the it.
Unless your bios/firmware/hardware is encrypting data on the drive there is no machine that will not yield data or control to a local hacker. You can always boot to an alternate volume (or remove a volume and access it via another machine).
With a Mac that you have physical access to, you could reboot it in to FireWire target mode and access anything you like (that isn't filevaulted) from a laptop.
I think we should approach David Letterman and have him start a new segment: "Statements on Slashdot that the writers think are jokes, but aren't really jokes."
Of course, only stupid people would be freaked out. Snipers don't use laser pointers on their rifles, it tells you there's a sniper pointing a weapon at you. Sort of defeats the whole purpose of being hidden quiet and all.
If a sniper DID use a laser aimer, it would most likely be in part of the near IR or UV bands so they could see it through their scope or night vision system, but the target wouldn't.
Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen any real law enforcement officer with a laser aimer on their weapon.
It would be even more interesting to know if that statue has been tested in the court systems. There used to be a feteral law that you could not point such things as airplanes, helicopters and such. The law was overturned when the FDA (they regulate lasers don't ya know), and the FAA determined that the average laser pointer can do no harm, and that they need not be controlled for public saftey reasons.
I suspect that your conviction (if you managed to get one) would be overturned in higher courts.
To be techically correct, OS X (and every Mac OS since System 6) are capable of "multiple monitor" support. This means that the system can use as many display ports as you can cram in to the system. I used to run 5 displays on a Quadra 900 under System 7. I currently run 3 from my G3/333 (one from internal, two from a Radeon 7000). The current set of dual-head display cards available would allow you to drive 8 displays off a single PowerMac; 6 via PCI and 2 via AGP. If you consider that the current crop of PowerMacs can process up to 9 video streams simultaneously, this setup sounds a lot less ludicrous, You could drive a fairly large video wall with that.
Yea, the BLADE may be $1,700, but the chassis to put it in costs $12,000, and the modular power supply costs another $2,000. These are not the real prices, but guesses based on my previous experience with purchasing blade based components.
More specifically, YES the government can hold patents and copyrights on works, but only in the public interest.
NASA for example could patent a new idea/process, but the patent could not be used for profit by NASA. The patent would protect the technology from control by a private party. The same is true for copyrights, the government can hold copyright in the "name of the people", so that no-one can later attempt to monopolize the work.
Italian food has always has lots of tomatos in it.
In reality, the tomato is indiginous to North America, and was not know anywhere else in the world until the voyages following columbus started taking the plants back to the "old world". Even then the fruit was not widely used for decades, as the tomato plant is in the poisonous nightshade family of plants. Despite the proliferation of tomatos in Italian cooking, no recipe containing them is more than 200 years old.
online distribution has already surpassed CDs No it hasn't. At least not for legal copies. A recent article floating around seemed to state that more music was purchased online that on CDs, but the date they cited was only relevant to CD "singles", which historically sold very poorly in retail stores. On-line, singles make sense and sell well.
Because the musicians have contracts with their record companies. Under those contracts, the musicians usually have no distribution rights to the music they produce; they've sold all those rights to the company. These contracts are sometimes for "life", or for a certatin number of years or albums. Once out of the contract, the mucican still does not own their old music in most cases
The companies get away with this because most "acts" are signed when they are nobodies. The record company fronts the money to publicise the music until it catches on. If you can't afford to distribute your own music, and your new to the industry, you likley either can't afford a lawyer to explain the legal contract to you, or you'll sign about any contract just to get in to the buisiness.
iTMS is the first (AFAIK) retail outlet that does not discriminate in cost/fees and placement between the "big 5" and the "indies". of Course, Apple/iTMS can't get you on with Letterman or Leno like a big record company can/will. iTMS sells music, they don't maket music makers.
Maybe in 80 years we'll see CD audio go away. There is just too much equipment out there...
Uh huh. And when was the last time you purchased or played a 45, or an 8 track or an audio cassette? All of those technologies were ubiquotous in their time, and all have faded to oblivion in the face of new technology. CDs are about due for a replacement from both a technological and a historical standpoint.
If you seriously think that CDs will last 80 or even another 15 years, then you seriously underesimate the advancement of techology.
iTMS tracks can be freely copied between any number of computers. Up to three computers may be authorized to play your purchased tracks at any time.
I don't know of any restriction that keeps you from keeping your tracks on 20 computers, and authorizing and de-authorizing them as needed. The authorization process takes an internet connection and about 20 seconds.
The problems with all of these "touch screen" systems, wether based on open of closed source, is that there is no way to guarantee that what the voter chooses is what is voted electronically and that the same vote is recoded electronically and on the paper trail.
The basis of the voting system (IMO) need to be the voter making a direct mark on some tangible and independently verifiable object. Touch screen systems fail at this, the voter touches the screen which electronically stores the vote. There is no way to verify that the vote recorded is that which was cast. It would be quite possible for a hacker to cause the machine to register one vote electronically and one vote manually.
Such a touch-screen and paper trail system seem to demand an automatic "re-count", you count the automatic system tally, then you must also count the paper trail receipts. What's going to happen when the two are not the same to within 1%? Will the electronic tally be deemed faulty, or will the paper handling system be deemed faulty?
With the single point voting systems this is not an issue. The "punch card" and "fill in the box" ballots both achieve the direct manipulation and independently verifiable tests. There have been some problems with them, but this should be taken care of with voter education, and voters actually caring about the process before the elections. You can't solve human stupidity with technology, you can only hide the symptoms.
I live in Mesa, Arizona where we use the "blacken this area" type ballot. It's easy to understand and easy to do. There's no easy way to alter my ballot without it being obvious it was tampered with. The ballot leaves my hand directly in to the electronic voting thingie. If ever there were a recount, the paper ballot if authoritative since that is what I voted. Of course, we have our own problems here: the main one is that they don't check I.Ds at the votinc center. All you need to tell them is your name and your address. So all you need to vote multiple times is a phone book and a way to get to several voting centers.
If anything, this would help restore ecological balance in the areas around resivoirs. The resivoirs I've seen are human created, not natural. This actually causes an increase in humidity and perhaps rainfall in the areas around them. Decreasing the evaporation would bring things more in line with the "natural" state of the area.
...by spreading an ultra-thin blanket of organic molecules on the surface to block the escape of water molecules...
Are they trying to place a positive ecological spin on oil spils/slicks? Oil is organic, and it does prevent the evaporation of the underlying water. I recall seeing/reading elsewhere that a few millileters is enough to create a minute slick over several square kilometers.
Slashdot Mirror
He said/meant they make no profit, he didn't say they made no income/revenue. Read his more complete statement ...Jobs has one more reason not to be concerned about the competition. "The dirty little secret of all this is there's no way to make money on these stores," he says. For every 99 Apple gets from your credit card, 65 goes straight to the music label. Another quarter or so gets eaten up by distribution costs... at Time magazine
People say there is no cost to digital ditribution, but bandwidth, servers, backup systems, facilities, disaster recovery plans, and personell all cost money.
The 30 or so cents that Apple collects from each sale just about covers those costs. At some point economies of scale will allow Apple to start eeking out a profit from their share.
On your points:
1) Apple is actively negotiating for rights and fees in other countries. This is a headache in much of the world. I have no doubth that Apple has the infrastructure in place to roll out any country's service as soon as licensing is ironed out.
2) There are a BUNCH (over100) indie lables that just signed up for iTMS in the past month or two, we should start seeing indi music flood in to the service like a tsunami over the next few months. The indies are tripping over themselves to get on board with this store. on iTMS they are equals with the "big 5" in every respect. (on an interesting side note, I'm wondering if Apple will require all indies to use FairPlay, or will allow non DRM AAC files in the end).
3) DRM is not something I've not heard anyone seriously complain about. The few complaints/gripes I've read are from people who don't understand the rights you get from the store: You are free to use the music on any number of iPods (and what self respecting, RDF susceptible Mac user doesn't use an iPod or four), any number of CDs (which you can give away to friends and family) and in any movies or slide shows you create on DV, DVD, VCD, etc. all of this as long as it's not for commercial use.
Apple's music license specifically allows me to make a copy of songs and give them away; permanantly! This would be considered piracy with a CD or cassette where one archive/backup copy is allowed and there is no secondary distribution/use allowed.
If people think that iTMS has restrictive DRM, I can't imagine how many complaints there must be about other services that charge per CD burn, or limit you to two or three burns of a song or don't allow use of the music in any of your personal movies, or limit you to one or two protable players, etc.
...You compress to a higher-quality-than-you-ever-had-in-AAC bitrate MP3 with no loss...
Impossible. MP3 and AAC are two different models of audio compression. The only way to not loose quality would be to burn to CD, then rip to the same quality AAC with the same encoder software at the same settings, but minus the DRM.
ANY change in compression on the re-encoding will yield loss, perhaps imperceptible, but it will be there.
I'm also thinking you don't understand the history of MP3 and AAC. The man who developed the MP3 perceptual compression techology later (something like a decade later) came up with a better model and developed AAC out of it. AAC has more sample points and more channels than MP3 format (48 vs 5). When the developer of both formats publicly states that AAC is a better sounding format than MP3, I'm willing to trust that statement.
Actually, it's more like less than 15 million in the RIAA's pockets. Other articles/sources state the breakdown is something like :
60% to RIAA (split between label and song writers)
2% to the artists
remainder (38%) to Apple (minus of course the credit card processing percentage)
You've either responded to the wrong message, or your have completely failed to understand my point.
Simply STATING that Hussein must be "controlled" and unilaterally taking matters in to your own hands without any Constitutional basis or support of international law or concensus are two completely different things.
There is no crime in the former, and there is with the latter.
...This is important if for no other reason than that we have a concept of justice, that people should pay for their crimes...
Please explain our concept of justice to the hundreds being held in Camp X-ray without being charged or tried with any crime. They have not broken any US Laws and were not captured in a war zone. (remember Congress NEVER issued a declaration of war that would make our troop actions in the Middle East legal).
Please explain our concept of justice to the thousands of Iraqi and Afgan civilians that we've bombed to death without any warning and without any legal cause.
Please explain our concept of justice that allows a sitting President to make known false statements in sworn testimony to Congress and not be impeached and tried for it.
People should pay for their crimes, and we should start with Bush for just purgery, violation of the Constitution and his oath to uphold it, and for his terrorist acts and tactics in foreign lands.
...He also helped subsidize the terrorists that attacked this country...
What are you talking about? The US government (despite trying desperately to do so) has found absoloutly no evidence that Saddam or the Iraqi government ever funded or consorted with Al Queda or any other "terrorist" group.
On the other hand, we have plenty of evidence that Saudi Arabia HAS directly funded, armed, aided and abedded known terrorist leaders and groups. When do we invade Saudi Arabia?
The "pot shots" as you call them that I take at the US President are simply requests for factual information that makes his stated case. To date I have not seen that ANYTHING that Bush stated as a reason for illegally invading Iraq to be true (no weapons, no terrorist support, no intent to harm neigbors).
Bush lied, he is a cad and a coward. If you think otherwise, then please link to official government press releases/information that provides me with this information. NOT press releases that say they have the information, but the actual information.
It was actually the idea of the British occupying forces to use chemical weapons to control the country of Iraq. It was standard proceedure for the British to use nerve gas against the remote towns when the tax monies were not sent in on time, or just randomly to "keep the people in line".
Saddam simply continued the technique.
Once Saddam was out of power (actually we didn't wait that long), the US started randomly bombing the people.
Randomly bombing Iraqis is a long and honored tradition. Saddam wasn't the first, and he wasn't be the last to do it.
The vast majority of "Linux" that people want to learn has nothing to do with Linux itself, but all the OTHER stuff that comes with a distribution; ie: editors, programming, web/mail servers, etc. You can do all of that on a Mac with OS X and the developer tools installed. Jaguar now even supports some of the APIs from Linux, making even more Linux-only software compile without alteration under Darwin (the Unix core of OS X).
Install OS X, and Fink and she'll have all the Apple GUI goodness, drivers for all the hardware, and all the power and flexibility of the Unix system under the hood (bash, sendmail, vi, perl, etc).
While I agree with your arguments, I would like to make a journalistic suggestion to you: check your facts before you publish. You shouldn't just accept the widely held, but wrong conceptions when you write.
The United States is not a Democracy. The constitution specifically states that the Federal Government shall be that of a Republic. We operate as a Republic (a highbred socialist/capitalist one) and there are (to my knowlege) no plans to change to a Democracy.
In a Democracy, each and every citizen would have equal say in the running of the government. There would be no politicians or representatives. Ideas would sprout from the people and be voted on by the people.
This is different from Anarchy, in that Democracy allows for the rule of law and the enforcement of law, Anarchy does not.
We in the United States are just now beginning to reach a technological level where a Democracy could work from a logistical standpoint. Unfortunately the US media and the US schools are failing to educate/inform people in a manner that allows objective thought based on facts.
The issues you mention have absoloutly nothing to do with Mac OS, and everything to do with a machine not being secure if a malicious person has physical access to the it.
Unless your bios/firmware/hardware is encrypting data on the drive there is no machine that will not yield data or control to a local hacker. You can always boot to an alternate volume (or remove a volume and access it via another machine).
With a Mac that you have physical access to, you could reboot it in to FireWire target mode and access anything you like (that isn't filevaulted) from a laptop.
I think we should approach David Letterman and have him start a new segment:
"Statements on Slashdot that the writers think are jokes, but aren't really jokes."
Of course, only stupid people would be freaked out. Snipers don't use laser pointers on their rifles, it tells you there's a sniper pointing a weapon at you. Sort of defeats the whole purpose of being hidden quiet and all.
If a sniper DID use a laser aimer, it would most likely be in part of the near IR or UV bands so they could see it through their scope or night vision system, but the target wouldn't.
Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen any real law enforcement officer with a laser aimer on their weapon.
It would be even more interesting to know if that statue has been tested in the court systems. There used to be a feteral law that you could not point such things as airplanes, helicopters and such. The law was overturned when the FDA (they regulate lasers don't ya know), and the FAA determined that the average laser pointer can do no harm, and that they need not be controlled for public saftey reasons.
I suspect that your conviction (if you managed to get one) would be overturned in higher courts.
To be techically correct, OS X (and every Mac OS since System 6) are capable of "multiple monitor" support. This means that the system can use as many display ports as you can cram in to the system. I used to run 5 displays on a Quadra 900 under System 7. I currently run 3 from my G3/333 (one from internal, two from a Radeon 7000).
The current set of dual-head display cards available would allow you to drive 8 displays off a single PowerMac; 6 via PCI and 2 via AGP.
If you consider that the current crop of PowerMacs can process up to 9 video streams simultaneously, this setup sounds a lot less ludicrous, You could drive a fairly large video wall with that.
Yea, the BLADE may be $1,700, but the chassis to put it in costs $12,000, and the modular power supply costs another $2,000. These are not the real prices, but guesses based on my previous experience with purchasing blade based components.
More specifically, YES the government can hold patents and copyrights on works, but only in the public interest.
NASA for example could patent a new idea/process, but the patent could not be used for profit by NASA. The patent would protect the technology from control by a private party.
The same is true for copyrights, the government can hold copyright in the "name of the people", so that no-one can later attempt to monopolize the work.
I think a better (and more accurate myth) is:
Italian food has always has lots of tomatos in it.
In reality, the tomato is indiginous to North America, and was not know anywhere else in the world until the voyages following columbus started taking the plants back to the "old world". Even then the fruit was not widely used for decades, as the tomato plant is in the poisonous nightshade family of plants.
Despite the proliferation of tomatos in Italian cooking, no recipe containing them is more than 200 years old.
online distribution has already surpassed CDs
No it hasn't. At least not for legal copies. A recent article floating around seemed to state that more music was purchased online that on CDs, but the date they cited was only relevant to CD "singles", which historically sold very poorly in retail stores.
On-line, singles make sense and sell well.
Because the musicians have contracts with their record companies. Under those contracts, the musicians usually have no distribution rights to the music they produce; they've sold all those rights to the company.
These contracts are sometimes for "life", or for a certatin number of years or albums.
Once out of the contract, the mucican still does not own their old music in most cases
The companies get away with this because most "acts" are signed when they are nobodies. The record company fronts the money to publicise the music until it catches on. If you can't afford to distribute your own music, and your new to the industry, you likley either can't afford a lawyer to explain the legal contract to you, or you'll sign about any contract just to get in to the buisiness.
iTMS is the first (AFAIK) retail outlet that does not discriminate in cost/fees and placement between the "big 5" and the "indies". of Course, Apple/iTMS can't get you on with Letterman or Leno like a big record company can/will. iTMS sells music, they don't maket music makers.
Maybe in 80 years we'll see CD audio go away. There is just too much equipment out there...
Uh huh. And when was the last time you purchased or played a 45, or an 8 track or an audio cassette? All of those technologies were ubiquotous in their time, and all have faded to oblivion in the face of new technology. CDs are about due for a replacement from both a technological and a historical standpoint.
If you seriously think that CDs will last 80 or even another 15 years, then you seriously underesimate the advancement of techology.
iTMS tracks can be freely copied between any number of computers. Up to three computers may be authorized to play your purchased tracks at any time.
I don't know of any restriction that keeps you from keeping your tracks on 20 computers, and authorizing and de-authorizing them as needed. The authorization process takes an internet connection and about 20 seconds.
The problems with all of these "touch screen" systems, wether based on open of closed source, is that there is no way to guarantee that what the voter chooses is what is voted electronically and that the same vote is recoded electronically and on the paper trail.
The basis of the voting system (IMO) need to be the voter making a direct mark on some tangible and independently verifiable object. Touch screen systems fail at this, the voter touches the screen which electronically stores the vote. There is no way to verify that the vote recorded is that which was cast. It would be quite possible for a hacker to cause the machine to register one vote electronically and one vote manually.
Such a touch-screen and paper trail system seem to demand an automatic "re-count", you count the automatic system tally, then you must also count the paper trail receipts. What's going to happen when the two are not the same to within 1%? Will the electronic tally be deemed faulty, or will the paper handling system be deemed faulty?
With the single point voting systems this is not an issue. The "punch card" and "fill in the box" ballots both achieve the direct manipulation and independently verifiable tests. There have been some problems with them, but this should be taken care of with voter education, and voters actually caring about the process before the elections. You can't solve human stupidity with technology, you can only hide the symptoms.
I live in Mesa, Arizona where we use the "blacken this area" type ballot. It's easy to understand and easy to do. There's no easy way to alter my ballot without it being obvious it was tampered with. The ballot leaves my hand directly in to the electronic voting thingie. If ever there were a recount, the paper ballot if authoritative since that is what I voted.
Of course, we have our own problems here: the main one is that they don't check I.Ds at the votinc center. All you need to tell them is your name and your address. So all you need to vote multiple times is a phone book and a way to get to several voting centers.
If anything, this would help restore ecological balance in the areas around resivoirs. The resivoirs I've seen are human created, not natural. This actually causes an increase in humidity and perhaps rainfall in the areas around them.
Decreasing the evaporation would bring things more in line with the "natural" state of the area.
...by spreading an ultra-thin blanket of organic molecules on the surface to block the escape of water molecules...
Are they trying to place a positive ecological spin on oil spils/slicks? Oil is organic, and it does prevent the evaporation of the underlying water.
I recall seeing/reading elsewhere that a few millileters is enough to create a minute slick over several square kilometers.