When the motion to adjourn was made, over 100 Republicans were signed up to speak for 5 minutes each on oil/energy. The Dems abused the rules (and yes the Republicans do this too, but not nearly as much) in an attempt to prevent those folks from speaking. Now some (most) of those Republicans were undoubtably (Sturgeon's Law) going to be an utter waste of their 5 minutes.
What you do is ask how often does the Speaker order the lights, microphones, and cameras shut down when the House adjourns? (C-SPAN is contracturally required to carry whatever is being said in the House regardless of whether or not it is in session).
So I'm not going to tell you what to think, but what I plainly observed was the Dems gaming the system (the rules of the House) to prevent the Republicans from speaking. When it comes to gaming the system, the donkeys in both House and Senate have shown far less restraint than the elephants. (Or would you prefer Red vs Blue?)
Umm.. "House"? - the guy is a Senator, but I agree with the sentiment.
Well, a real good place to start would be with the *current* chairman of the House Ways and Means committee. So who really thinks he should have three rent-controlled apartments in Harlem for his personal use, plus a fourth rent-controlled apartment in the same building for his office? Particularly when the terms for the apartments in question make it real darn clear they are intended for residential use only. And the little maniac is collecting donations for his "congressional library"? (Come on, we already have one Library of Congress)
Once he is gone, yes, lets just kick out everyone in the House or Senate with more than twelve years total service in Congress. For those who buy into the "valuable experience" being thrown away by term limits, remember we do that with the President after no more than ten years (First President since FDR to serve ten years will be when Obama is impeached/resigns/blown up by William Ayres and Hillary steps in in 2011).
Universally excepted? You need to go to a better school. One where they teach "vocabulary".:)
Those fixes are a whole lot easier to implement in a society with relatively homogenous "demographics". If an approach that involved putting the kiddos into "tracks" (vocational vs college prep) as used to be done were to be re-implemented in the US, it would soon run afoul of far more than just the NEA and their state versions. The affected organizations would not even need to wait for a "demographic" breakdown- they already know the results. And there are the well meaning folks that have no clue - consider that Bill Gates seems to be operating under the assumption that every child should receive a "world class college prep education". Now Mr Gates is a fairly bright fellow, but if everyone receives that sort of education, how many will actually benefit from it?
Case in point - California schools are requiring students to pass algebra in order to graduate from the eighth grade. Now slashdotters might think that algebra is pretty simple stuff, but that algebra requirement is expected to multiply an already ridiculously high dropout rate. Perhaps algebra and its emphasis on symbol manipulation requires a certain level of intelligence to pick up. Perhaps not everyone is that smart and that lack is not being considered (for whatever reason - PC, political agendas, simple intellectual blind spot) by the folks who did find algebra simple and are now deciding what everyone should learn as well as how and when they should learn it.
In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education concluded in A Nation at Risk: "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war." Shall we now declare a "War on Ignorance"?
Perhaps judicious public floggings of "certified educators" and immediate deportation of officers of any *EA organizion to Gitmo would help. Perhaps, treating those people who support the policies of *EA organizations anbd provide financial support for same (I'm looking at you - Fed and state government aganecies and Congresscritters), should be rounded up, tried by military tribunals as traitors and imprisoned until such time as an as yet unborn (and untainted by the current "Educational System") populace can pass a referendum to free them.
I'm still waiting for really fast rewriteable storage in the 1000+TB range. I am really tired of having to keep a wall full of optical media for my recorded entertainment. I want something the size of a stereo component or smaller that I can load up with (legally purchased - not rented!) materials and not have to worry about running out of space any time soon. So that means room for (at a minimum) 2K hours of CD quality audio tracks, and 500 hours hi-def (or better) video. It should also be eaily expandable and it should be a simple storage device - let the playback devices worry about the various codecs etc. - all it needs to do is push bytes around.
Obviously, I also want an easy and reasonably priced(8 bucks per movie, 2 dollars per hour of TV programs, 1 dollar per song) means of filling such an appliance with new content as well as free software for transferring all my existing CDs and DVDs to the big honking storage device.
Don't go all nit-picky on me about DRM and other pesky details. I'm just being the idea guy here. I know there will be problems to be addressed. It is up to the "content producers" to see if they are willing to sell at the price I am willing to pay. To help them out, if they will meet my prices, I'll accept some limitations on my rights - for example I won't worry about resale rights. I can sell the entire appliance including content, but not individual items off the device.
Now avoiding TFA like the plague, it occurs to me that "shockwaves" within the skull able to cause hydrostatic pressure loads comparable to 120+ decibels (is that loud enough for ya?) hitting your eardrums might just damage something other than eardrums.
But lets not even think about the fine possibilities such as massive damage on the cellular level - just consider the overpressures that could be set up within blood vessels. It will be interesting to see if there is any increase in "massive cerebral hemorrage" as a cause of death going forward.
Or an increase in the wearing of hats by the political class anytinme they give a speech:)
Don't be stupid. No one pays for anything in the public domain. Instead expect new laws (treaties) that will enable works now in the public domain to be "salvaged" (in keeping with the whole bottle of rum motif) and placed back under copyright protection.
I leave it as an intellectual exercise for the reader to imagine how the "salvaged" copyrights to the Old Testament will play out between the Jews, Christians, Catholics, and Moslems. For that matter the Jews may have some claim to the New Testament as well. (ducking now).
Yep, the university often owns the bookstore, and a little bit of calculation suggetss that they can probably make more overall profit off the sales of the used book than the minty fresh version (with new improved lemony scent) every semester. That is, as long as the older books remain useable - if a new ediotion comes out every semester, the old books have no value, the university makes less money on the sale of each book and they will just ship the unsold texts back to the idiot publisher that made digital piracy so irresistable.
Once again, the publishers claim digital piracy is what they are fighting, but think about it. How long does it take to scan a text and start a torrent - or just share the PDF with classmates? Hours (maybe longer if you need to proofread the scan). So explain how a new edition every semester at an ever increasing price prevents digital piracy.
All it really prevents is used book sales. Which leaves students already strapped for cash (and now often in debt to their eyebrows with student loans) needing as much or more money to pay for the textbooks. It seems more like the publishers are actively encouraging digital piracy as they stamp out used book sales.
You make a good point, but it has a flaw. The schools do not give a darn where the student gets the text from. They are therefore only very slightly concerned about textbook piracy (from the standpoint of general moral decay). Reread my quote from the article.
It is the PUBLISHERS that are threatening to go with new editions every semester to "fight piracy" (and lets be really clear here) - when the publishers say "fighting piracy" they are really fighting used book sales. The publishers have absolutely no idea on how to deal with digital piracy, but are living in a dream world making an older text worthless will somehow save them from their obsolete business model.
He said that if the problem worsens, publishers may have to take other steps to prevent piracy, such as releasing a new version of most textbooks every semester. The versions could include slight modifications that could be changed easily--such as altering the numbers in math problems.
"They may compelled to," he said, "in order to stay one step ahead of the pirates."
Hmm changing editions every semester instead of once per year, three-four editions per year. Sounds like some publishers are really not understanding the nature of their problem. They have a vastly smaller market than the movie and music industries. Pushing out that many editions - with the coreespondingly smaller print runs screwing over their diminishing economies of scale... Now factor in ever increasing distribution (fuel) costs. I predict profitable times for the first textbook publishing house to come up with a better way of handling the matter.
If the publishing houses will not come up with a better approach, then how long before some schools without textbook authors on faculty start digging up old public domain texts for basic math, langauges, etc (the stuff that really is as complete now as it was in the 1800s)?
Perhaps, the publishers need to take a hard look at their actual profit per dead tree copy and see what they would have to sell their texts for to make the same amount of profit if the replaced their entire distribution and production network (printing presses, warehouses, trucks, etc) with an authentication server and PDFs of their texts. If can drop their price far enough (say under $15 per copy), how much trouble would piracy be then?
For that matter, let the school handle it directly -eliminate the entire individual sale and just tack the price of the license(yes license!) for the text into the tuition charge for the class. Remove the point of weakness the pirates have attacked (the separate purchase of the textbook). Of course, if the publishers insist on a very high price for their text, they will find less folks taking the class that requires it...
Yup, contracting these from China sure makes a lot of sense. One Chinese product has already been found with factory embedded software designed specifically to get WoW account info. Of course, that was probably just a proof of concept for a product with a far more malicious payload (corporate espionage as well as just plain vanilla espionage and larceny).
"If you're only travelling 15 minutes I'd say it's not worth using a powered vechile unless you're infirm, very old, disabled, need to carry lots of tools/equipment etc. etc."
There are also environmental considerations. Cycling in 90+ degree F (32+ C) with 90% plus humidity is just not going to fly. You'd need to pack a change of clothes and have a nice cold shower waiting for you at your destination. And just forget it entirely during a bad heat wave or the hottest part of the summer.(Can you say heat stroke?) Heck, in those conditions, the 3 minute walk from parking garage to building entrance is going to leave you drenched - no matter what brand of anti-perspirant you use.
"By your logic, we shouldn't get tax cuts for hybrid cars, or tax cuts and government rebates on solar cells in our homes, because in the end our tax dollars are paying for it..."
Don't know about the OP's logic, but by my logic you are absolutely correct. Why should you get to hold a fricken gun to my head (courtesy of the IRS) to pay for your Prius? If you want to buyt a Prius, or install solar cells on your roof, fine - and more power to you. But when you use the government to steal money from others to pay for it, well it is time for you to STFU and pay for the real costs of your toys.
You know the way everyone is supposed to pay for the real costs of using oil etc. - or does such blatant hypocrisy just not register?
Well the original PC had these thingies on the motherboard called expansion slots. Folks would plug various "expansion cards" into these slots to handle things like video cards (anyone remember the Hercules Monochrome card?), modems and so forth.
Well for the first couple of years the PC was out (before any clones), you might be interested to know what the single best selling expansion card for the IBM PC was.
It was a Z80 card so folks could run their beloved CP/M applications. Just one of those inconvenient data points no one seems to want to bring up in their zeal to show how utterly MSFT dominated the PC market from the very beginning. I would have to say that MSFT didn't really become a major software power till after Compaq and the rest of the cloners showed up. Good thing for MSFT that Gates did have the vision to maintain control over DOS.
For extra trivia credit, who supplied the BASIC that shipped with the Apple ][ computers?
The sun is suffering from gender identity issues. Someone needs to take him aside and quietly explain to him that guys do not get knocked up. This lack of spots is just an indication that his acne is finally going away. Of course, that means he will probably be leaving home soon - and won't that mess up our planet's energy balance.
I live in Harris Co. and the machines are pretty horrendous. They look pretty, but there is no form of verification whatsoever. As for the asshats who say that we have secure electronic systems for securities trading, credit card systems and bank ATMs... well just remember that not one of those systems is anonymous.
As to detecting "fradulent activity" as an election judge, well if you hear somone operating a power screwdriver or see small parts being dropped on the floor, well that is about as good as you can get on detecting tampering with those damnable machines. In other words, you are not going to detect any fraud that involves hacking the machines. You are limited to what you can do to prevent "old fashioned" fraud - ie the vote early and often crowd. Since there are no ballot boxes you don't have to worry about them being tampered with:)
Now if you could demand photo ID (and anyone presenting those cards from the Mexican consulate should be immediately deported) and compare that against your local voter rolls that would be nice. It would also be nice if you had some way to update your voter rolls by checking against death certificates issued in the last year.
Using a machine as an interface would be fine, just let it print a darn ballot that the voter can verify.
"The day they announced that fact people I knew started leaving in droves"
Yes, and what people did you know? Perhaps just the very small percentage of folks who just discovered that their obsession with raiding actually marginalized their value as customers to Blizzard. So those folks left "in droves"? Big Whoop. WoW isn't EQ and Blizz eventually recognized that being held hostage to the demands of "serious raiders" was not a good way to serve the vast majority (90%+) of their customer base.
Be brutally honest and you will recognize that there are probably more Chinese gold farmers in the game than "Serious raiders".
Seriously, if someone does not have the intellectual capacity to read a ballot, how can they be considered to have the intellectual capacity to vote in an informed manner? If a significant portion of a nation's citizenry has not mastered this simple pre-requisite skill for the maintenance of a civilized society for any reason, then they (as a group) can not be trusted to make any other decision that would not be damaging to their own civilization.
I'll entertain arguments that those who are physically incapable (blindness for example) should be allowed the vote, but not for those who are mentally incapable. Yes, I recognize that some educational systems produce illiterates in great numbers. That is a problem with the educational system and the democratic government(totalitarian states do not count - we are talking about elections after all) that permits it.
Really, just calling them failures shows a considerable failure on the part of the folks compiling the list. Lack of political will is not the same as lack of technical ability. And demonstration of negative results is also good for when the matter comes up again. The telepathic spies WILL come up again within 20 years as we get more and more unthinking morons in positions of budgetary power.(and the current crop of "consensus scientists" will need to find another scam when they hit middle age)
And calling the exoskeleton a "current" project? There has been ongoing research into this before RAH ever dreamed of the Mobile Infantry.
Google might find you a few such stories. More seriously, the majority of desalination plants are found in areas that are not known for their ecological sensitivities. (They are more known for totalitarian governments that supreess dissidents rather harshly).
Actualy desalination plants do not convert 100% of their intake into dealainated water - they just pump the somewhat saltier water back out along with the various chemicals they use to purify and treat their product. I suppose the same approach could be taken with a massive electrolysis plant and there would be no need to add clorine for example.
The desalination plants do have some negative effects, but where it is a choice between providing drinking water and not, drinking water trumps damage to shellfish beds etc. (And given the nature of the local and national governments near most desalination plants and you will not have much luck conducting an impact survey.
1> Salt water is only mostly water. Where are you going to dump all the waste (something like 25Kg of salt per 1000 liters) 2> Hydrogen by itself is fairy hard to handle - it escapes most containers, and it makes metals brittle so pipelines (and engines - think about the pressures inside an engine cylinder and what happens when your engine block and cylinders become very britle)will have some severe problems. 3> although #2 touches on it, hydrogen will need an entirely new support infrastructure - I did not see that mentioned before you start profiting. 4> Along with that new infrastructure, you will have an entirely new level of security issues. I invite you to consider the explosive potential of a hydrogen tanker being used by "youths" as an improvised FAE.
But I am in agreement that we should be building nuclear power plants - I would try to find more ways to replace fossil fuels with electricity as well as finding more non-fossil alternatives.
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Yes, espececially the citations which demonstrate how transparently partisan I am.
Yep, you missed the story.
When the motion to adjourn was made, over 100 Republicans were signed up to speak for 5 minutes each on oil/energy. The Dems abused the rules (and yes the Republicans do this too, but not nearly as much) in an attempt to prevent those folks from speaking. Now some (most) of those Republicans were undoubtably (Sturgeon's Law) going to be an utter waste of their 5 minutes.
What you do is ask how often does the Speaker order the lights, microphones, and cameras shut down when the House adjourns? (C-SPAN is contracturally required to carry whatever is being said in the House regardless of whether or not it is in session).
So I'm not going to tell you what to think, but what I plainly observed was the Dems gaming the system (the rules of the House) to prevent the Republicans from speaking. When it comes to gaming the system, the donkeys in both House and Senate have shown far less restraint than the elephants. (Or would you prefer Red vs Blue?)
Umm.. "House"? - the guy is a Senator, but I agree with the sentiment.
Well, a real good place to start would be with the *current* chairman of the House Ways and Means committee. So who really thinks he should have three rent-controlled apartments in Harlem for his personal use, plus a fourth rent-controlled apartment in the same building for his office? Particularly when the terms for the apartments in question make it real darn clear they are intended for residential use only. And the little maniac is collecting donations for his "congressional library"? (Come on, we already have one Library of Congress)
Once he is gone, yes, lets just kick out everyone in the House or Senate with more than twelve years total service in Congress. For those who buy into the "valuable experience" being thrown away by term limits, remember we do that with the President after no more than ten years (First President since FDR to serve ten years will be when Obama is impeached/resigns/blown up by William Ayres and Hillary steps in in 2011).
Universally excepted? You need to go to a better school. One where they teach "vocabulary". :)
Those fixes are a whole lot easier to implement in a society with relatively homogenous "demographics". If an approach that involved putting the kiddos into "tracks" (vocational vs college prep) as used to be done were to be re-implemented in the US, it would soon run afoul of far more than just the NEA and their state versions. The affected organizations would not even need to wait for a "demographic" breakdown- they already know the results. And there are the well meaning folks that have no clue - consider that Bill Gates seems to be operating under the assumption that every child should receive a "world class college prep education". Now Mr Gates is a fairly bright fellow, but if everyone receives that sort of education, how many will actually benefit from it?
Case in point - California schools are requiring students to pass algebra in order to graduate from the eighth grade. Now slashdotters might think that algebra is pretty simple stuff, but that algebra requirement is expected to multiply an already ridiculously high dropout rate. Perhaps algebra and its emphasis on symbol manipulation requires a certain level of intelligence to pick up. Perhaps not everyone is that smart and that lack is not being considered (for whatever reason - PC, political agendas, simple intellectual blind spot) by the folks who did find algebra simple and are now deciding what everyone should learn as well as how and when they should learn it.
In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education concluded in A Nation at Risk: "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war." Shall we now declare a "War on Ignorance"?
Perhaps judicious public floggings of "certified educators" and immediate deportation of officers of any *EA organizion to Gitmo would help. Perhaps, treating those people who support the policies of *EA organizations anbd provide financial support for same (I'm looking at you - Fed and state government aganecies and Congresscritters), should be rounded up, tried by military tribunals as traitors and imprisoned until such time as an as yet unborn (and untainted by the current "Educational System") populace can pass a referendum to free them.
I don't know about bears and open mouths, but I'm sure the Japanese are working on a robot that can beat all human challengers at tonsil hockey.
I'm still waiting for really fast rewriteable storage in the 1000+TB range. I am really tired of having to keep a wall full of optical media for my recorded entertainment. I want something the size of a stereo component or smaller that I can load up with (legally purchased - not rented!) materials and not have to worry about running out of space any time soon. So that means room for (at a minimum) 2K hours of CD quality audio tracks, and 500 hours hi-def (or better) video. It should also be eaily expandable and it should be a simple storage device - let the playback devices worry about the various codecs etc. - all it needs to do is push bytes around.
Obviously, I also want an easy and reasonably priced(8 bucks per movie, 2 dollars per hour of TV programs, 1 dollar per song) means of filling such an appliance with new content as well as free software for transferring all my existing CDs and DVDs to the big honking storage device.
Don't go all nit-picky on me about DRM and other pesky details. I'm just being the idea guy here. I know there will be problems to be addressed. It is up to the "content producers" to see if they are willing to sell at the price I am willing to pay. To help them out, if they will meet my prices, I'll accept some limitations on my rights - for example I won't worry about resale rights. I can sell the entire appliance including content, but not individual items off the device.
Hmm...
Now avoiding TFA like the plague, it occurs to me that "shockwaves" within the skull able to cause hydrostatic pressure loads comparable to 120+ decibels (is that loud enough for ya?) hitting your eardrums might just damage something other than eardrums.
But lets not even think about the fine possibilities such as massive damage on the cellular level - just consider the overpressures that could be set up within blood vessels. It will be interesting to see if there is any increase in "massive cerebral hemorrage" as a cause of death going forward.
Or an increase in the wearing of hats by the political class anytinme they give a speech :)
Don't be stupid. No one pays for anything in the public domain. Instead expect new laws (treaties) that will enable works now in the public domain to be "salvaged" (in keeping with the whole bottle of rum motif) and placed back under copyright protection.
I leave it as an intellectual exercise for the reader to imagine how the "salvaged" copyrights to the Old Testament will play out between the Jews, Christians, Catholics, and Moslems. For that matter the Jews may have some claim to the New Testament as well. (ducking now).
Yep, the university often owns the bookstore, and a little bit of calculation suggetss that they can probably make more overall profit off the sales of the used book than the minty fresh version (with new improved lemony scent) every semester. That is, as long as the older books remain useable - if a new ediotion comes out every semester, the old books have no value, the university makes less money on the sale of each book and they will just ship the unsold texts back to the idiot publisher that made digital piracy so irresistable.
Once again, the publishers claim digital piracy is what they are fighting, but think about it. How long does it take to scan a text and start a torrent - or just share the PDF with classmates? Hours (maybe longer if you need to proofread the scan). So explain how a new edition every semester at an ever increasing price prevents digital piracy.
All it really prevents is used book sales. Which leaves students already strapped for cash (and now often in debt to their eyebrows with student loans) needing as much or more money to pay for the textbooks. It seems more like the publishers are actively encouraging digital piracy as they stamp out used book sales.
You make a good point, but it has a flaw. The schools do not give a darn where the student gets the text from. They are therefore only very slightly concerned about textbook piracy (from the standpoint of general moral decay). Reread my quote from the article.
It is the PUBLISHERS that are threatening to go with new editions every semester to "fight piracy" (and lets be really clear here) - when the publishers say "fighting piracy" they are really fighting used book sales. The publishers have absolutely no idea on how to deal with digital piracy, but are living in a dream world making an older text worthless will somehow save them from their obsolete business model.
Hmm changing editions every semester instead of once per year, three-four editions per year. Sounds like some publishers are really not understanding the nature of their problem. They have a vastly smaller market than the movie and music industries. Pushing out that many editions - with the coreespondingly smaller print runs screwing over their diminishing economies of scale... Now factor in ever increasing distribution (fuel) costs. I predict profitable times for the first textbook publishing house to come up with a better way of handling the matter.
If the publishing houses will not come up with a better approach, then how long before some schools without textbook authors on faculty start digging up old public domain texts for basic math, langauges, etc (the stuff that really is as complete now as it was in the 1800s)?
Perhaps, the publishers need to take a hard look at their actual profit per dead tree copy and see what they would have to sell their texts for to make the same amount of profit if the replaced their entire distribution and production network (printing presses, warehouses, trucks, etc) with an authentication server and PDFs of their texts. If can drop their price far enough (say under $15 per copy), how much trouble would piracy be then?
For that matter, let the school handle it directly -eliminate the entire individual sale and just tack the price of the license(yes license!) for the text into the tuition charge for the class. Remove the point of weakness the pirates have attacked (the separate purchase of the textbook). Of course, if the publishers insist on a very high price for their text, they will find less folks taking the class that requires it...
I agree. Even the most dedicated parental basement denizen should know the correct terminology for this would be "megabucks".
For the historically challenged, "Megabucks" predates "Megabytes" and is indeed a base 10 measurement.
Yup, contracting these from China sure makes a lot of sense. One Chinese product has already been found with factory embedded software designed specifically to get WoW account info. Of course, that was probably just a proof of concept for a product with a far more malicious payload (corporate espionage as well as just plain vanilla espionage and larceny).
"If you're only travelling 15 minutes I'd say it's not worth using a powered vechile unless you're infirm, very old, disabled, need to carry lots of tools/equipment etc. etc."
There are also environmental considerations. Cycling in 90+ degree F (32+ C) with 90% plus humidity is just not going to fly. You'd need to pack a change of clothes and have a nice cold shower waiting for you at your destination. And just forget it entirely during a bad heat wave or the hottest part of the summer.(Can you say heat stroke?) Heck, in those conditions, the 3 minute walk from parking garage to building entrance is going to leave you drenched - no matter what brand of anti-perspirant you use.
"By your logic, we shouldn't get tax cuts for hybrid cars, or tax cuts and government rebates on solar cells in our homes, because in the end our tax dollars are paying for it..."
Don't know about the OP's logic, but by my logic you are absolutely correct. Why should you get to hold a fricken gun to my head (courtesy of the IRS) to pay for your Prius? If you want to buyt a Prius, or install solar cells on your roof, fine - and more power to you. But when you use the government to steal money from others to pay for it, well it is time for you to STFU and pay for the real costs of your toys.
You know the way everyone is supposed to pay for the real costs of using oil etc. - or does such blatant hypocrisy just not register?
As to supplying the OS for PCs...
Well the original PC had these thingies on the motherboard called expansion slots. Folks would plug various "expansion cards" into these slots to handle things like video cards (anyone remember the Hercules Monochrome card?), modems and so forth.
Well for the first couple of years the PC was out (before any clones), you might be interested to know what the single best selling expansion card for the IBM PC was.
It was a Z80 card so folks could run their beloved CP/M applications. Just one of those inconvenient data points no one seems to want to bring up in their zeal to show how utterly MSFT dominated the PC market from the very beginning. I would have to say that MSFT didn't really become a major software power till after Compaq and the rest of the cloners showed up. Good thing for MSFT that Gates did have the vision to maintain control over DOS.
For extra trivia credit, who supplied the BASIC that shipped with the Apple ][ computers?
And now the source of the problem is revealed:
The sun is suffering from gender identity issues. Someone needs to take him aside and quietly explain to him that guys do not get knocked up. This lack of spots is just an indication that his acne is finally going away. Of course, that means he will probably be leaving home soon - and won't that mess up our planet's energy balance.
troll, funny, does not matter.
:)
I live in Harris Co. and the machines are pretty horrendous. They look pretty, but there is no form of verification whatsoever. As for the asshats who say that we have secure electronic systems for securities trading, credit card systems and bank ATMs... well just remember that not one of those systems is anonymous.
As to detecting "fradulent activity" as an election judge, well if you hear somone operating a power screwdriver or see small parts being dropped on the floor, well that is about as good as you can get on detecting tampering with those damnable machines. In other words, you are not going to detect any fraud that involves hacking the machines. You are limited to what you can do to prevent "old fashioned" fraud - ie the vote early and often crowd. Since there are no ballot boxes you don't have to worry about them being tampered with
Now if you could demand photo ID (and anyone presenting those cards from the Mexican consulate should be immediately deported) and compare that against your local voter rolls that would be nice. It would also be nice if you had some way to update your voter rolls by checking against death certificates issued in the last year.
Using a machine as an interface would be fine, just let it print a darn ballot that the voter can verify.
"The day they announced that fact people I knew started leaving in droves"
Yes, and what people did you know? Perhaps just the very small percentage of folks who just discovered that their obsession with raiding actually marginalized their value as customers to Blizzard. So those folks left "in droves"? Big Whoop. WoW isn't EQ and Blizz eventually recognized that being held hostage to the demands of "serious raiders" was not a good way to serve the vast majority (90%+) of their customer base.
Be brutally honest and you will recognize that there are probably more Chinese gold farmers in the game than "Serious raiders".
Or am I the only one old enough to remember that brief time when DAME was considered the unholy terror?
The illiterate should not have the vote.
Seriously, if someone does not have the intellectual capacity to read a ballot, how can they be considered to have the intellectual capacity to vote in an informed manner? If a significant portion of a nation's citizenry has not mastered this simple pre-requisite skill for the maintenance of a civilized society for any reason, then they (as a group) can not be trusted to make any other decision that would not be damaging to their own civilization.
I'll entertain arguments that those who are physically incapable (blindness for example) should be allowed the vote, but not for those who are mentally incapable. Yes, I recognize that some educational systems produce illiterates in great numbers. That is a problem with the educational system and the democratic government(totalitarian states do not count - we are talking about elections after all) that permits it.
Really, just calling them failures shows a considerable failure on the part of the folks compiling the list. Lack of political will is not the same as lack of technical ability. And demonstration of negative results is also good for when the matter comes up again. The telepathic spies WILL come up again within 20 years as we get more and more unthinking morons in positions of budgetary power.(and the current crop of "consensus scientists" will need to find another scam when they hit middle age)
And calling the exoskeleton a "current" project? There has been ongoing research into this before RAH ever dreamed of the Mobile Infantry.
Google might find you a few such stories. More seriously, the majority of desalination plants are found in areas that are not known for their ecological sensitivities. (They are more known for totalitarian governments that supreess dissidents rather harshly).
Actualy desalination plants do not convert 100% of their intake into dealainated water - they just pump the somewhat saltier water back out along with the various chemicals they use to purify and treat their product. I suppose the same approach could be taken with a massive electrolysis plant and there would be no need to add clorine for example.
The desalination plants do have some negative effects, but where it is a choice between providing drinking water and not, drinking water trumps damage to shellfish beds etc. (And given the nature of the local and national governments near most desalination plants and you will not have much luck conducting an impact survey.
I used to think like that but:
A few major problems with your solution
1> Salt water is only mostly water. Where are you going to dump all the waste (something like 25Kg of salt per 1000 liters)
2> Hydrogen by itself is fairy hard to handle - it escapes most containers, and it makes metals brittle so pipelines (and engines - think about the pressures inside an engine cylinder and what happens when your engine block and cylinders become very britle)will have some severe problems.
3> although #2 touches on it, hydrogen will need an entirely new support infrastructure - I did not see that mentioned before you start profiting.
4> Along with that new infrastructure, you will have an entirely new level of security issues. I invite you to consider the explosive potential of a hydrogen tanker being used by "youths" as an improvised FAE.
But I am in agreement that we should be building nuclear power plants - I would try to find more ways to replace fossil fuels with electricity as well as finding more non-fossil alternatives.
Nah, this is no place for half measures. We must obviously elimiminate all jet kerosene releases by 2030.
All hands: Abandon Planet! Abandon Planet!
Then we can nuke the site from orbit. It is the only way to make sure.