Well, you can of course file a complaint. But if you file it in the court system, the court will probably find that you have no standing. A better route would be to file a complaint to a consumer's group in the US. The group would be able to pursue legal action for you, as it is a legal entity of the US. I doubt you could expect any remuneration, as a non-citizen, but it might slow down the spam a little.
Um, I'm not sure you realize this, but it's a lot cheaper and easier (at least in the US) to walk up to aforementioned civilian target and stick a homemade bomb in the mailbox. Why bother with a very expensive missile?
I still find it interesting that whoever wins will still have gotten more of the popular vote than President Clinton ever did.
I believe that in '96 Clinton was elected with 42% of the popular vote. This means that most of the people in the US did NOT want him to be President.
No matter which way this race ends, the people are a lot closer to having their will served. I personally am a Republican, but I think that Bush should concede due to the popular vote. It would take him from being a Politician, and make him a Statesman. True election and Campaign reform would be so easy with a gesture that grand.
I have a quick, and possibly completely wrong hypothesis. According to Hawking (and PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong) that black holes evaporate, due to the creation of "virtual particles".
Many physicists believe that a true vacuum cannot exist with any stability, and in the presence of a vacuum the universe gets cranky and (by taking a little local energy) fills the space with pairs of opposite and equal "virtual particles" which, while not quite real, have mass. Usually, these particles attract each other, and annhiliate.
Now, our black hole, which is causing the local space to be subjected to fairly hard vaccum, spawns quite a few of these almost-particles. Some of these pairs are created across the event horizon. The poor particle inside is sucked into the singularity, while its lifemate is flung at extremely high speed out into the nothing. Through some trickery of conservation, this causes the black hole to lose mass, albeit at a rate much less that it is gaining mass.
Here's where my hypothesis kicks in: a black hole that is more massive would have a larger gravity well, and thus a wider event horizon. Basically, it has more surface area. So there's a lot more area in which those v-particles can be torn from each other. Thus, it would evaporate faster. So a really massive black hole's "evaporation" rate would be much higher since surface area increases very quickly with increased volume.
You're probably thinking that the mega-hole would pull mass in faster and would thus offset the evaporation rate. This is where my hypothesis gets a little threadbare, but lets explore a little anyway. First, the gravity well on the mega-hole is so huge that the angular escape velocity will be much lower than a midrange hole, therefore more of the local masses will be above the speed threshold of the gravity well, and ride the slingshot out into deep space, never having gotten near the event horizon. It would, if you are buying this, essentially be throwing its own food away.
A second possibilty that could lower a mega-hole's mass aquisition is that since the mass near and beyonmd the event horizon is going to be getting increasingly dense in any black hole, there may be an upper velocity to how fast the hole can suck in more matter. Much like wind resistance keeps a skydiver from passing the speed of sound. Thus the black holes wouldn't have a linear increase in their rates of "easting" with respect to mass.
So, our friendly neighborhood mega-hole would be evaporating much faster, eating a little faster, and throwing away a significant portion of the local produce. Sounds pretty inefficient. Anyone buy this?
I don't think the solution to this problem is to add yet another way to fill our overworked court system.
Email spammers are paying much less to send millions of messages than are their snail-mail counterparts. Rather than litigate them into oblivion, they should be forced to register a bulk spam permit, and pay to maintain it...at a high enough rate to reduce the "noise" cluttering our bandwidth. I have no idea who the payment would go to, or how to regulate it...it's just an idea...
Perhaps, but it seems to me (IMHO, of course) that NASA is a very convenient bitch to kick around Capitol Hill. NASA has no real tool to strike fear into the hearts of the common man. (Except perhaps Hollywood.)
Try to cut the military and you'll suddenly find us in a potential war we couldn't possibly be ready for. Try to cut the social programs (which, admittedly, I'm not a fan of.) and you'll be inundated with pictures of all the "normal Americans" starved to death by your faithful elected officials...
The only real option your average spineless politico has to "cut the budget" and save you...the hard-working American man/woman a few bucks is to cut programs that can't defend themselves. I submit (IMHO) that perhaps NASA has done a bit more for the average American than the National Endowment for the Arts has (the NEA having a much more vocal and retaliatory group of supporters than any group of scientists could ever be.)
Yes, the NEA has a MUCH smaller budget so it's definitely not a fair comparison, but it's the best I could do this morning. Sue me. I promise to try to think of a better one after I have my coffee.
McDonald's doesn't seem to agree with you. It seems they're still franchising like crazy. The McDonald's business model is founded on the franchise, and I doubt that they'd want to invest the time and money to put a system of managers, district managers, regional managers, etc. that would be required to run a "chain" of McDonald's burgertoriums. Why do the work when you can just soak em a percentage for the name?
The major difference being that McDonalds is a franchise, not a chain...a large group boycotting the local McDonalds will kill the bottom line for the franchise owner, prompting local action. It was this type of pressure from the franchise holders that led to the change from styrofoam containers to the current cardboard ones. You'll NEVER have enough resources to combat the conglomerates, but the little guy at the bottom is easy prey. (You'll probably depress the local micro-economy in the process...but that's not the issue is it?)
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you can of course file a complaint. But if you file it in the court system, the court will probably find that you have no standing. A better route would be to file a complaint to a consumer's group in the US. The group would be able to pursue legal action for you, as it is a legal entity of the US. I doubt you could expect any remuneration, as a non-citizen, but it might slow down the spam a little.
I know it's too early to tell, but in a perfect
world, maybe the end of the internet boom is a
return to the world of reasonable law.
BTW, there is no presumption of guilt OR innocence
in a civil proceeding...
Um, I'm not sure you realize this, but it's a lot cheaper and easier (at least in the US) to walk up to aforementioned civilian target and stick a homemade bomb in the mailbox. Why bother with a very expensive missile?
This GPS receiver can pinpoint the satellite it's on to within an inch?
It seems to me that finding the satellite with upward looking radar would pinpoint it to within a few multiples of the radar wavelength....hrm...
I still find it interesting that whoever wins will still have gotten more of the popular vote than President Clinton ever did.
I believe that in '96 Clinton was elected with 42% of the popular vote. This means that most of the people in the US did NOT want him to be President.
No matter which way this race ends, the people are a lot closer to having their will served. I personally am a Republican, but I think that Bush should concede due to the popular vote. It would take him from being a Politician, and make him a Statesman. True election and Campaign reform would be so easy with a gesture that grand.
Many physicists believe that a true vacuum cannot exist with any stability, and in the presence of a vacuum the universe gets cranky and (by taking a little local energy) fills the space with pairs of opposite and equal "virtual particles" which, while not quite real, have mass. Usually, these particles attract each other, and annhiliate.
Now, our black hole, which is causing the local space to be subjected to fairly hard vaccum, spawns quite a few of these almost-particles. Some of these pairs are created across the event horizon. The poor particle inside is sucked into the singularity, while its lifemate is flung at extremely high speed out into the nothing. Through some trickery of conservation, this causes the black hole to lose mass, albeit at a rate much less that it is gaining mass.
Here's where my hypothesis kicks in: a black hole that is more massive would have a larger gravity well, and thus a wider event horizon. Basically, it has more surface area. So there's a lot more area in which those v-particles can be torn from each other. Thus, it would evaporate faster. So a really massive black hole's "evaporation" rate would be much higher since surface area increases very quickly with increased volume.
You're probably thinking that the mega-hole would pull mass in faster and would thus offset the evaporation rate. This is where my hypothesis gets a little threadbare, but lets explore a little anyway. First, the gravity well on the mega-hole is so huge that the angular escape velocity will be much lower than a midrange hole, therefore more of the local masses will be above the speed threshold of the gravity well, and ride the slingshot out into deep space, never having gotten near the event horizon. It would, if you are buying this, essentially be throwing its own food away.
A second possibilty that could lower a mega-hole's mass aquisition is that since the mass near and beyonmd the event horizon is going to be getting increasingly dense in any black hole, there may be an upper velocity to how fast the hole can suck in more matter. Much like wind resistance keeps a skydiver from passing the speed of sound. Thus the black holes wouldn't have a linear increase in their rates of "easting" with respect to mass.
So, our friendly neighborhood mega-hole would be evaporating much faster, eating a little faster, and throwing away a significant portion of the local produce. Sounds pretty inefficient. Anyone buy this?
Email spammers are paying much less to send millions of messages than are their snail-mail counterparts. Rather than litigate them into oblivion, they should be forced to register a bulk spam permit, and pay to maintain it...at a high enough rate to reduce the "noise" cluttering our bandwidth. I have no idea who the payment would go to, or how to regulate it...it's just an idea...
Try to cut the military and you'll suddenly find us in a potential war we couldn't possibly be ready for. Try to cut the social programs (which, admittedly, I'm not a fan of.) and you'll be inundated with pictures of all the "normal Americans" starved to death by your faithful elected officials...
The only real option your average spineless politico has to "cut the budget" and save you...the hard-working American man/woman a few bucks is to cut programs that can't defend themselves. I submit (IMHO) that perhaps NASA has done a bit more for the average American than the National Endowment for the Arts has (the NEA having a much more vocal and retaliatory group of supporters than any group of scientists could ever be.)
Yes, the NEA has a MUCH smaller budget so it's definitely not a fair comparison, but it's the best I could do this morning. Sue me. I promise to try to think of a better one after I have my coffee.
McDonald's doesn't seem to agree with you. It seems they're still franchising like crazy. The McDonald's business model is founded on the franchise, and I doubt that they'd want to invest the time and money to put a system of managers, district managers, regional managers, etc. that would be required to run a "chain" of McDonald's burgertoriums. Why do the work when you can just soak em a percentage for the name?
The major difference being that McDonalds is a franchise, not a chain...a large group boycotting the local McDonalds will kill the bottom line for the franchise owner, prompting local action. It was this type of pressure from the franchise holders that led to the change from styrofoam containers to the current cardboard ones. You'll NEVER have enough resources to combat the conglomerates, but the little guy at the bottom is easy prey. (You'll probably depress the local micro-economy in the process...but that's not the issue is it?)