Although the conviction does help a lot. Here's roughly how it works.
The DEA catches "Joe" at an Amtrak station with 50 kilos of cocaine. Joe doesn't seem to hold any kind of job anywhere, but he still manages to have a $500,000 house, a Corvette, and various expensive toys. The DEA will have no problem convincing a federal judge that the house, car, and toys are the result of profiting from illegal drug trade, and will seize it all. Later on, the DEA will sell all of this at a drug auction, and give 10% of the proceeds of Joe's ex-stuff to Amtrak.
Now, later on, the DEA busts "Marc" at another Amtrak station. He has a small bag of uppers. He also has a halfway decent job paying $25K a year, a small apartment, and a used car. While Marc, just like Joe, can probably expect to do some time in a federal facility, the DEA will probably not even try to seize the apartment and car because they can't reasonably prove that Marc acquired these from profiting on illegal drugs.
Most times, in fact, the DEA will not seize assets that are not "worth their time". They, like every other federal agency, loves showing off, and usually reserves full seizure of assets for the "big boys" with multiple new cars and mansions.
Actually, airport security uses a wide variety of methods to pick people for "random" luggage searches. What struck me funny was a list I saw about the DEA's profile for drug runners in major airports. Their profile index contained the following 'indications' that a person might be a drug runner. (Not the complete list, by any means.)
- First person off the plane.
- Last person off the plane.
- Picks up luggage promptly from the luggage carosel.
- Dawdles over picking up luggage from the carosel.
- Dressed in black.
- Dressed in bright colours.
- Smoking cigarettes.
- Smoking cigars.
- Not smoking.
- Long hair.
- Crewcut.
As you can see, many of these contradict each other. Apparently, the DEA wanted a policy that would allow them to stop anyone that even looked suspicious.
Maybe. Maybe not. Amtrak, as I understand it, has been losing money on commercial fares for years. They still do quite a bit of cargo transporting, but in terms of travelers, they've been dropping steadily.
Now, is it to the point where they need an extra source of income? Can't say. But it would be one reason why they would do this.
Side note: The DEA awarding a cut of seized assets to involved third parties is nothing new. They do this with a lot of police departments, as an additional incentive (you know, beyond "Protect and Serve") to get drug law violators busted. Several counties in Florida (or rather, their police departments) made mad amounts of cash in the late 80s and early 90s from drug seizure awards. (And, as I seem to recall, spent a lot of it defending themselves from lawsuits over those asset seizures, not a few of which were questionable.)
Heh. I am a human clone. Of my identical brothers. No one considers the fact that identical twins and triplets are genetic clones. Sure, it's not very scientific, and no test tubes were harmed in the process, but there you go.
Probably not. Isn't Dark Matter supposed to account for something along 90+% of the 'missing' mass of the universe?
Although, how did they get that figure (or whatever the real figure is) at all? It's not like we can point to a spot in the sky and say the universe ends there. So how do they (they being the astronomers and astrophysicists) know how much mass is missing? (Sounds like I really need to pick up that book by Hawking...)
Um, excuse me? Dormant? We're talking about a gravitational singularity. It's not like it times out after not collecting any matter for a century or two.
Now yes, after a large amount of time of no matter coming into the event horizon of a black hole, the accretion disk will 'erode' (for lack of a better term) because no new matter is replenishing it.
Even when that happens, though, the black hole still will emit x-rays and such, so it is still detectable.
Damn straight. I find most current first person shooters boring after about an hour of play, although I do admit playing the original Doom in death-match mode for hours at a time. I find the big problem with those games is that it really requires no thought. You go around and blow everything to gibs. It's more rapid-fire reflex then anything else.
*shrug* Maybe I just prefer games that you actually have to think to be able to solve. (Oddly enough, I can't stand Myst... go fig.)
Exactly. I mean, I've never listened to Moby before. But using Napster, I dl'ed South Side, and now I'm probably going to go out and buy the album "Play". Mind you, I went ahead and dl'ed the Gwen Stefani remix as well, because I understand that's not on the album and I wanted it too...
Only thing holding me up at this point is finding a store that still sells tapes... for some reason, I prefer them to CDs, even with the added ease of switching tracks on CDs....
Excuse me? The same Windows that has.DLL problems with darn near every application they put out? The same Windows that had 54,000 bugs with the release of ME? (excuse me, unresolved issues)
If everything switched to the Microsnark standard, every system would be getting blue screens of death from such complex operations as moving the mouse or opening a second application while a first one is still running. Various distros of Linux may have their problems, but I'd rather not go to a M$ desktop standard (no matter how much they plan on making it look like a Mac).
Ahh, but according to Microsnark it is restrictive because anything that they would develop under it, they would have to give away. If they can't make money off of it, it must be restrictive to their business model.
Mind you, considering that they are still planning on going to the "rental" plan of software, they even more then before loathe the idea of "free software".
And to think one of my long term goals was to move to Australia....
And the thing of it is, it's still very subjective. One cop might find something objectionable that, say his partner might not. And what are the guidelines? Oh sure, XXX-rated pr0n is obviously "unsuitable" for minors, but what about web pages on breast cancer (which is always brought up during comments on web filters), or web pages on gun safety? Would those "incite criminal activity" and thus by outlawed?
Good grief... what some politicians will do to "protect the young".
Here's my problems with the 'plan' of requiring implants:
1) Right to Privacy. Obvious, here.
2) Violation of civil rights. This is invasive and unnecessary surgery. There is always the possibility of death in surgery. Requiring this implant for every man, woman and child in the USA would no doubt lead to quite a few deaths on the operating table.
3) Time and resource constraints. Okay, line up everyone in the city/county/state! Time to get your implants! Oh, and where are they getting the trained personnel to perform all these operations?
4) Presumed innocence. I don't like the idea that the government has the 'right' to track me through an implant even though I haven't done anything.
Now, hopefully, this idea of implanting the masses will never happen. I'd prefer to see this as some sort of optional, high-cost option that rich kids and jaded adults would go for, leaving the rest of us alone, as usual.
But the plastic surgery has a putative benefit of making the patient look better (well, that's the theory...). I mean, given a choice between a tummy tuck or some implant that is going to fsck over my chances of privacy, I'll go for the tummy tuck (not that I actually need it yet...).
I think the point that was trying to be made is that there aren't going to be long lines to get "privacy-invading" implants put into people's bodies.... (though I would love working colour cyber-eyes).
Nope, but I saw one guy stir a small beaker of the stuff with his bare finger and not get hurt. Of course, then he started dipping ink pens in the beaker and shattering them. Cleaning up that mess wasn't fun...
No offense, but unless I missed an important lecture in thermodynamics, how can they hope to make money from this? It takes more power (which equals money in the eyes of the power companies) to pump water uphill then they can get from it going downhill...
I mean, the first two Laws of Thermodynamics can be summed up as:
Okay, you have V=IR, where for those who don't know, V = voltage, I = Amperage, and R = Resistance. Bare copper wire with an AWG of 4 (diameter of between.2023 and.2063 inches) has a nominal resistance of.2485 Ohms and a maximum resistance of.2534 Ohms per 1000 feet at 20 C.
What this means is that at nominal conditions, for every 1000 feet of bare copper wire, you lose about a quarter Volt per Amp of power you pump through the lines. Insulation between wires keeps them from melting together as the resistance heats the wires, and keeps the power loss due to resistance lower.
If these high-temperature superconductors reduce the power transmission loss (the resistance that a superconductor offers is practically zero, but not exactly zero) which they should, then more power will be available for use as you're not losing as much.
Will your power costs drop? Logically, they should, but logic has little to do with power company rates.
Yeah, if you're slick enough and careful enough, you can take a shot glass of liquid nitrogen, pour it into your mouth, and exhale the nitrogen gas without hurting yourself. But you also have to be damn lucky too... I would suggest never ever trying this, no matter how cute he/she is or how much you want to impress her/him.
Well, it all depends on where in space you are. An object that both absorbs and emits perfectly, put at a distance from the Sun equal to that of Earth, will stabilize at a temperature of about 280 K or 7 C. If it's shielded from the Sun but exposed to inter-planetary and inter-stellar radiation, it reaches about 5 K or -268 C. If it were far from all stars and galaxies, it would come into equilibrium with the microwave background at about 2.7 K. Now, the last is not feasible at this time.
Depending on how it is constructed, you'd have to use a lot less energy to keep it cool then a similar system on the ground, but there you go...
Ummm... no... the cubes are 10 cm on a side. That's a little less then 4 inches. You might be able to rig something to do a LEO fertilization of an egg in one of these cubes, but you couldn't even hope to bring it to term, not just because of lack of space. (Lack of nutrition for the developing fetus is a big sticking point.)
Maybe you could hatch insects in orbit in one of these things, but you'd need a much bigger cube to try damn near any of the higher mammals. (Maybe you could also raise mice in these things, but I doubt it.)
Question: How would an astronaut just leave a glove behind? It's not like you can take the damn things off without subjecting your hand to damn close to zero pressure (which tends to cause all kinds of nasty tissue damage).
Now, I'm not saying there's a lot of crap up in orbit that doesn't need to be there. There is. I doubt this midget satellites will help any. However, if they are in a low earth orbit then they will fall back to earth after too long or need to get picked up before they fall back to earth.
This leads me to believe that this will be used more by the "idle rich" and larger companies that can afford to waste fifty large on experiments that require micro-gravity. Now, mind you, I wouldn't mind being able to do this myself, but I tend to think I could spend the money much better then on a one-shot satellite...
Maybe because of that rare L. Ron Hubbard collection of rap tunes, including the infamous "Fight the Thetan"?
Seriously, though, since the German government already considers the CoS a business rather then a church, then it might be listed as "illegal" in terms of fraud if they referred to themselves as a religion on any Germany-based servers.
Not that I care what happens to the CoS, mind you...
I don't think this has a chance in Hell(tm) of working right. There are just too many ways to get around it.
Would you prefer that he had it be a road crew that, oops, accidentally cut the fiber lines whilst repairing a culvert drainage.
Big deal, he picked on farmers. If he had been talking about French farmers, it would have been completely merited. Anyway, how many times have we heard stories about Joe Farmer cutting fiber lines? It seems to make the news (at least here in the wilds of South Carolina) more then any news of road crews, inept technicians or drunk college students playing with the fiber lines.
Finally, it seems just a touch odd that someone using a quasi-Roman name (Solidus) would call anyone gwailo....
Slashdot Mirror
"Perhaps the gentlemen would care to discuss it over drinks?"
"Drinks! That's it! See what you can miss when you're not paying attention?"
(or something like that...)
Kierthos
Although the conviction does help a lot. Here's roughly how it works.
The DEA catches "Joe" at an Amtrak station with 50 kilos of cocaine. Joe doesn't seem to hold any kind of job anywhere, but he still manages to have a $500,000 house, a Corvette, and various expensive toys. The DEA will have no problem convincing a federal judge that the house, car, and toys are the result of profiting from illegal drug trade, and will seize it all. Later on, the DEA will sell all of this at a drug auction, and give 10% of the proceeds of Joe's ex-stuff to Amtrak.
Now, later on, the DEA busts "Marc" at another Amtrak station. He has a small bag of uppers. He also has a halfway decent job paying $25K a year, a small apartment, and a used car. While Marc, just like Joe, can probably expect to do some time in a federal facility, the DEA will probably not even try to seize the apartment and car because they can't reasonably prove that Marc acquired these from profiting on illegal drugs.
Most times, in fact, the DEA will not seize assets that are not "worth their time". They, like every other federal agency, loves showing off, and usually reserves full seizure of assets for the "big boys" with multiple new cars and mansions.
Kierthos
Actually, airport security uses a wide variety of methods to pick people for "random" luggage searches. What struck me funny was a list I saw about the DEA's profile for drug runners in major airports. Their profile index contained the following 'indications' that a person might be a drug runner. (Not the complete list, by any means.)
- First person off the plane.
- Last person off the plane.
- Picks up luggage promptly from the luggage carosel.
- Dawdles over picking up luggage from the carosel.
- Dressed in black.
- Dressed in bright colours.
- Smoking cigarettes.
- Smoking cigars.
- Not smoking.
- Long hair.
- Crewcut.
As you can see, many of these contradict each other. Apparently, the DEA wanted a policy that would allow them to stop anyone that even looked suspicious.
Kierthos
Maybe. Maybe not. Amtrak, as I understand it, has been losing money on commercial fares for years. They still do quite a bit of cargo transporting, but in terms of travelers, they've been dropping steadily.
Now, is it to the point where they need an extra source of income? Can't say. But it would be one reason why they would do this.
Side note: The DEA awarding a cut of seized assets to involved third parties is nothing new. They do this with a lot of police departments, as an additional incentive (you know, beyond "Protect and Serve") to get drug law violators busted. Several counties in Florida (or rather, their police departments) made mad amounts of cash in the late 80s and early 90s from drug seizure awards. (And, as I seem to recall, spent a lot of it defending themselves from lawsuits over those asset seizures, not a few of which were questionable.)
Kierthos
Heh. I am a human clone. Of my identical brothers. No one considers the fact that identical twins and triplets are genetic clones. Sure, it's not very scientific, and no test tubes were harmed in the process, but there you go.
Kierthos
Probably not. Isn't Dark Matter supposed to account for something along 90+% of the 'missing' mass of the universe?
Although, how did they get that figure (or whatever the real figure is) at all? It's not like we can point to a spot in the sky and say the universe ends there. So how do they (they being the astronomers and astrophysicists) know how much mass is missing? (Sounds like I really need to pick up that book by Hawking...)
Kierthos
Um, excuse me? Dormant? We're talking about a gravitational singularity. It's not like it times out after not collecting any matter for a century or two.
Now yes, after a large amount of time of no matter coming into the event horizon of a black hole, the accretion disk will 'erode' (for lack of a better term) because no new matter is replenishing it.
Even when that happens, though, the black hole still will emit x-rays and such, so it is still detectable.
Kierthos
Damn straight. I find most current first person shooters boring after about an hour of play, although I do admit playing the original Doom in death-match mode for hours at a time. I find the big problem with those games is that it really requires no thought. You go around and blow everything to gibs. It's more rapid-fire reflex then anything else.
*shrug* Maybe I just prefer games that you actually have to think to be able to solve. (Oddly enough, I can't stand Myst... go fig.)
Kierthos
Exactly. I mean, I've never listened to Moby before. But using Napster, I dl'ed South Side, and now I'm probably going to go out and buy the album "Play". Mind you, I went ahead and dl'ed the Gwen Stefani remix as well, because I understand that's not on the album and I wanted it too...
Only thing holding me up at this point is finding a store that still sells tapes... for some reason, I prefer them to CDs, even with the added ease of switching tracks on CDs....
Kierthos
Excuse me? The same Windows that has .DLL problems with darn near every application they put out? The same Windows that had 54,000 bugs with the release of ME? (excuse me, unresolved issues)
If everything switched to the Microsnark standard, every system would be getting blue screens of death from such complex operations as moving the mouse or opening a second application while a first one is still running. Various distros of Linux may have their problems, but I'd rather not go to a M$ desktop standard (no matter how much they plan on making it look like a Mac).
Kierthos
Ahh, but according to Microsnark it is restrictive because anything that they would develop under it, they would have to give away. If they can't make money off of it, it must be restrictive to their business model.
Mind you, considering that they are still planning on going to the "rental" plan of software, they even more then before loathe the idea of "free software".
Kierthos
And to think one of my long term goals was to move to Australia....
And the thing of it is, it's still very subjective. One cop might find something objectionable that, say his partner might not. And what are the guidelines? Oh sure, XXX-rated pr0n is obviously "unsuitable" for minors, but what about web pages on breast cancer (which is always brought up during comments on web filters), or web pages on gun safety? Would those "incite criminal activity" and thus by outlawed?
Good grief... what some politicians will do to "protect the young".
Kierthos
Your sarcasm is noted:
Here's my problems with the 'plan' of requiring implants:
1) Right to Privacy. Obvious, here.
2) Violation of civil rights. This is invasive and unnecessary surgery. There is always the possibility of death in surgery. Requiring this implant for every man, woman and child in the USA would no doubt lead to quite a few deaths on the operating table.
3) Time and resource constraints. Okay, line up everyone in the city/county/state! Time to get your implants! Oh, and where are they getting the trained personnel to perform all these operations?
4) Presumed innocence. I don't like the idea that the government has the 'right' to track me through an implant even though I haven't done anything.
Now, hopefully, this idea of implanting the masses will never happen. I'd prefer to see this as some sort of optional, high-cost option that rich kids and jaded adults would go for, leaving the rest of us alone, as usual.
Kierthos
But the plastic surgery has a putative benefit of making the patient look better (well, that's the theory...). I mean, given a choice between a tummy tuck or some implant that is going to fsck over my chances of privacy, I'll go for the tummy tuck (not that I actually need it yet...).
I think the point that was trying to be made is that there aren't going to be long lines to get "privacy-invading" implants put into people's bodies.... (though I would love working colour cyber-eyes).
Kierthos
Nope, but I saw one guy stir a small beaker of the stuff with his bare finger and not get hurt. Of course, then he started dipping ink pens in the beaker and shattering them. Cleaning up that mess wasn't fun...
Kierthos
No offense, but unless I missed an important lecture in thermodynamics, how can they hope to make money from this? It takes more power (which equals money in the eyes of the power companies) to pump water uphill then they can get from it going downhill...
I mean, the first two Laws of Thermodynamics can be summed up as:
1) You can't win.
2) You can't break even.
Kierthos
Okay, you have V=IR, where for those who don't know, V = voltage, I = Amperage, and R = Resistance. Bare copper wire with an AWG of 4 (diameter of between .2023 and .2063 inches) has a nominal resistance of .2485 Ohms and a maximum resistance of .2534 Ohms per 1000 feet at 20 C.
What this means is that at nominal conditions, for every 1000 feet of bare copper wire, you lose about a quarter Volt per Amp of power you pump through the lines. Insulation between wires keeps them from melting together as the resistance heats the wires, and keeps the power loss due to resistance lower.
If these high-temperature superconductors reduce the power transmission loss (the resistance that a superconductor offers is practically zero, but not exactly zero) which they should, then more power will be available for use as you're not losing as much.
Will your power costs drop? Logically, they should, but logic has little to do with power company rates.
Kierthos
Yeah, if you're slick enough and careful enough, you can take a shot glass of liquid nitrogen, pour it into your mouth, and exhale the nitrogen gas without hurting yourself. But you also have to be damn lucky too... I would suggest never ever trying this, no matter how cute he/she is or how much you want to impress her/him.
Kierthos
Well, it all depends on where in space you are. An object that both absorbs and emits perfectly, put at a distance from the Sun equal to that of Earth, will stabilize at a temperature of about 280 K or 7 C. If it's shielded from the Sun but exposed to inter-planetary and inter-stellar radiation, it reaches about 5 K or -268 C. If it were far from all stars and galaxies, it would come into equilibrium with the microwave background at about 2.7 K. Now, the last is not feasible at this time.
Depending on how it is constructed, you'd have to use a lot less energy to keep it cool then a similar system on the ground, but there you go...
Kierthos
...a Beowulf cluster of them.
Kierthos
What, like Iridium satellites?
Kierthos
Ummm... no... the cubes are 10 cm on a side. That's a little less then 4 inches. You might be able to rig something to do a LEO fertilization of an egg in one of these cubes, but you couldn't even hope to bring it to term, not just because of lack of space. (Lack of nutrition for the developing fetus is a big sticking point.)
Maybe you could hatch insects in orbit in one of these things, but you'd need a much bigger cube to try damn near any of the higher mammals. (Maybe you could also raise mice in these things, but I doubt it.)
Kierthos
Question: How would an astronaut just leave a glove behind? It's not like you can take the damn things off without subjecting your hand to damn close to zero pressure (which tends to cause all kinds of nasty tissue damage).
Now, I'm not saying there's a lot of crap up in orbit that doesn't need to be there. There is. I doubt this midget satellites will help any. However, if they are in a low earth orbit then they will fall back to earth after too long or need to get picked up before they fall back to earth.
This leads me to believe that this will be used more by the "idle rich" and larger companies that can afford to waste fifty large on experiments that require micro-gravity. Now, mind you, I wouldn't mind being able to do this myself, but I tend to think I could spend the money much better then on a one-shot satellite...
Kierthos
Maybe because of that rare L. Ron Hubbard collection of rap tunes, including the infamous "Fight the Thetan"?
Seriously, though, since the German government already considers the CoS a business rather then a church, then it might be listed as "illegal" in terms of fraud if they referred to themselves as a religion on any Germany-based servers.
Not that I care what happens to the CoS, mind you...
I don't think this has a chance in Hell(tm) of working right. There are just too many ways to get around it.
Kierthos
Would you prefer that he had it be a road crew that, oops, accidentally cut the fiber lines whilst repairing a culvert drainage.
Big deal, he picked on farmers. If he had been talking about French farmers, it would have been completely merited. Anyway, how many times have we heard stories about Joe Farmer cutting fiber lines? It seems to make the news (at least here in the wilds of South Carolina) more then any news of road crews, inept technicians or drunk college students playing with the fiber lines.
Finally, it seems just a touch odd that someone using a quasi-Roman name (Solidus) would call anyone gwailo....
Just my 2 shekels.
Kierthos