Re:In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamic
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Hackers On Atkins
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· Score: 1
Your comment deserves to be modded up, not because I'm out of date, but because it is based on data, or at least reporting on the data. It's good to look at real data to make your choice. If you find this data convincing, go for it.
First, to dismiss the findings of the liver inflammation study: no health professional would suggest a high simple sugar diet - eg sucrose etc. Such diets are long associated with obesity and liver and pancreas disease. There's nothing to indicate that these subjects were eating brown rice and whole wheat bread for their carbohydrates rather than fries and a coke. Without that data, the study doesn't mean much.
The USA Today article presents a summary of three smaller studies that found some interesting results - and indeed they are interesting. But the results are presented as a meta-study of smaller studies. The problem is that the association of high intakes of animal fats with coronary disease and obesity is the consequence of hundreds of studies. Taken as a whole, the data overwhelming contradicts the Atkins diet. It's not fair to choose only supportive studies for inclusion in a meta study.
The most reported and best structured study is the Harvard one, and it's generated a lot of press. But note that the Atkins organization paid for it. Paid research overwhelmingly achieves results in keeping with the sponsor's goals. Contradictory results don't' get published, not to demean the author, but if she found the opposite, we wouldn't have heard about it. How many studies did Atkins pay for that haven't found results? This study used 7 - SEVEN whole subjects on each diet. Compare this with more rigorous studies, such as this one which found a clear correlation between heart disease and animal fats: 80,000 nurses. It's your heart - which results do you trust?
But a more in-depth review of the results provides more details, and as always the results are less astonishing than the general press makes them seem. It's well known that it takes more energy to digest protein than carbohydrate. The subjects lost 2 pounds per week, not the 20 pounds of the absurd claims, and the difference in weight loss between equal Calorie subjects differentially fed protein or carbohydrate was only 20%, which is about the inefficiency of high protein processing. Like she says - it's not smoke and mirrors. Plus her subjects were fed fats considered relatively healthy - not hamburger patties, for example, but fish and chicken.
If you want to believe, just click your heels and eat your fatty beef (as long as we're not co-insured), but there's nothing in this study that should make you think doing so is healthy. It does suggest further study - I find the data unconvincing, but it definitely suggests, if it holds up in larger, non-atkins funded studies, that it may be possible to lose slightly more weight on the high fat and protein diet she cooked up vs the high carbohydrate diet she cooked up, at least as long as she's doing the cooking... But the numbers look to me to be more disproving of the Atkins diet than proof - here's why: it is well known that of the three basic calorie sources (carbohydrate, protein, fat) only protein has a substantially lower bioavailable caloric value than it's bomb calorimetric data would indicate. This is not new, mind you, but well known in "traditional" nutrition.
For example soy protein isolate provides about 3.28 Calories per gram, compared to roughly 4 Calories per gram for carbohydrate. Compare the two 1800 Calorie men's groups. Calorimetric values for the protein in their diets would be 4 Calories per gram: therefore the high fat group got 135 gms of protein per day, and the high carbohydrate group got 67.5, meaning the high protein group got 50 fewer available Calories per day. If they
Re:In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamic
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Hackers On Atkins
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· Score: 2, Informative
Might want to drop the fanaticism there. Check the studies again. The best there are say you lose weight just like on any restricted calorie diet. Like all things in this arena, some studies show conflicting data, but that doesn't make it right yet.
WRT heart disease, there's nothing magic about the Atkins diet. There are peoples on earth (generally rotund Eskimos for example) who eat diets like it, and people who eat the opposite (generally skinny consumers of Asiatic diets). Across all, more saturated fat makes more heart attacks. Look, if you and the other fanatics keep this up for 50 years or so, and if you all end up dying less, I'll believe it. Until then there's no good reason to, all exiting data points against it.
Re: the mystical powers of ketosis: guess what - the energy is in the fat, not how you consume it. If you wee'd out a highly energetic fatty urine, you'd sure know it. Either the energy is burned, excreted, or stored. Energetic molecules do not make it through your kidney, unless you've got serious problems.
What you mean to say is that the body is only able to extract about 75% of the energy available in the fat, the rest goes to thermodynamic inefficiency due to an alternate metabolic pathway. That's a fine argument and there may even be cases where there's some truth to it... maybe... but basic thermodynamics still applies - inefficiency means heat. You still burn the calories, you just don't get to store them. You do not pee them out.
Furthermore, what you're saying is that one gram of fat becomes heats 2kg of body weight 1 degree plus 7/9 of a gram of fat. Gram for gram, if you're correct, carbohydrate would still be less fattening (and protein slightly less still).
Look, go for it dude. If you believe, more power to you, but stop claiming that you've discovered the holy grail. You're on a diet, neither more nor less well founded or scientific than grapefruit or whatever. Not yet anyway. Collect some data and good luck. For me, I'll stick to eating a well balanced meal and getting regular exercise. It's working fine so far.
In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
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Hackers On Atkins
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· Score: 4, Insightful
OK kids, all crap aside, lets go back to basics:
Any energy that goes into your mouth goes one of 3 places:
1) You burn it. Literally - and burning food generates heat. Each gram of fat contains 9 Calories, which is equivalent to jogging for one minute. That's 9000 calories (little c) which will heat your average 200lb sysadmin 0.2 degrees F. There are 27 grams in an ounce - that's a half hour run per ounce of fat. Think about how sweaty that would make you. This is an important thermodynamic consideration we'll get back to.
2) You store it. One gram of fat in becomes one gram of fat on your ass. One gram of carbohydrate or protein in becomes 1/2 gram of fat on your ass. There's no magic here; joules don't vanish.
3) You excrete it. This is what chiral analogs of various energy sources do, such as Olestra. If this was happening, you would know it; the term is anal leakage. Sugars you cannot digest, like the sugars in beans, create equally socially endearing outputs.
Now the article claims that Atkins overclocks the body. Crap. If it did you'd get hot. Run a motor fast, it gets hot. Run your body fast, it gets hot. Take amphetamines, you start to twitch and sweat. Thermodynamics. You can't beat it. Atkins can't beat it. Atkins does not make you hot. If you burned an extra pound of fat you'd heat your body to boiling. It does not accelerate your metabolism, it does not perform any insulin magic. The whole thing is the stunningly ignorant optimism of the hopefully overweight.
But people do lose weight on it - or so it seems (statistically this isn't really borne out by actual controlled studies, but hey, who needs science when we can make choices based on anecdotes). Why? Because in a normal diet 60-70% of your calories come from carbohydrates and you cut them you and you're on a calories restricted diet. Bingo. Eat nothing at all and keep your activity level up and you'll lose about 1/2 pound each day (8.2oz of fat = 2000 calories). Eat more calories than nothing and prorate that weight lose. Joules are joules, they body isn't happy about wasting them, and if it does, bacteria won't and your cube neighbors won't be happy about that.
So much for the insulin magic and ketosis crap, but there's this wacky claim of "satiety " the claim that fat and protein is a high satiety food and that if you eat it, you'll eat less total. Could be. Maybe for some people, not for others. If it works for you, go for it, just don't make magic claims or act like the self-righteous health nuts who claim to Received The Counterintuitive Truth.
As for the health of it all, if you stop eating processed sugars, like every nutritionist including Atkins has been saying for 50 years, you'll generally lose weight, probably a lot of it, and you will be healthier. My mom used to call them "empty calories," but that's too kind. Sugars are bad, and Atkins is right about refined sugar (complex carbohydrates absorb more slowly, "glycemic index" crap aside) - you do tend to crash after (all nutritionists know this). Crash means metabolism temporarily slows. Slow metabolism means less calories burned. Not a lot less - watching TV burns 2.4 calories per minute, walking 2mph burns 2.8 - but a bit less, which means a small difference, a few grams of fat a day maybe. The big difference is eating less sugar - 4.5 Cal per M&M adds up fast.
As for the health of it, if you eat "too much" protein your piss will start to smell weird. If that happens back off. Otherwise it's not likely to kill you. Don't chow down on high saturated fats, the "Atkins helps heart disease" stuff is crap. If you lose weight your cholesterol level will drop, but that doesn't contradict about 50 years of very well documented data showing a direct correlations between saturated fat and heart disease, which strikes thin, otherwise healthy people too.
Skipping fruit is dumb, but it won't kill you if you're eating your veggies. All the vitamins and minerals are in vegetab
The ~NOLs are inventions of the Naval Ordinance Lab, curiously located out there in the corn fields; famously NiTiNOL and TerFeNOL, not exactly the the most overwhelmingly original names, they do sound techy.
The "latest" material, terfenol, exploits the giant magnetostrictive effect, which sounds even more brand new, but it isn't, having been discovered in the 1840s.
The high strain versions of this (and the thermally actuated "shape memory alloys") were developed in the 1940s for use in high powered sonar. They are generally used as replacements for voice coils and for the same reason. If you want to actuate your domestic structure, you can use a big one and keep it cool with LN2.
These materials are far too old to be covered by existing patents, so they're fabricated all over the world. Indeed, chinese manufacturers are in production.
Well, this could be true - but there are two problems: 1) it's a bit like currency - wouldn't it be harder to counterfeit if there were hundreds of currencies rather than just one? Not really, all you need to do is counterfeit the least secure to get rich. Similarly, all a nefarious zealot needs doo is throw one key county election, in one state to throw the national election, some lame backwater filled with confused old people, some distant dingleberry of a state... Just make some simple little ambiguous change and throw some small statistical number of votes from, say, the marginal winner, to, say, some random freak, and the wrong guy wins.
So 100 systems isn't really any more secure than one. But the same plan works if there's only 3 or maybe mostly only 1 voting system used. This argument about using contractors apes the ones made by partisan think tanks made up of the company execs scoring the $100M DRE contracts - but it's not only logically wrong, it's just plain wrong. 2) There are three vendors. Three. Two run on windows. Two. Two OS's to hack. But really all you need is to use Access to remotely edit the diebold databases in a dozen locations and you've won all the elections you need to ensure that all the key positions are filled by members of the party the DRE vendor explicitly supports, and who can prove that just because there were unprecedented 12 point swings that upset the leaders between the morning of the election and the afternoon that it wasn't just an anomaly... DRE's mean no recounts. They always get it right and they're just as secure as the windows 95 OS they were running on which we know is bulletproof.
Hell, it's just a parable for elections in general - eventually a system that works will be left? Only if there's a system that works to begin with. Let the people decide and we'll get a good candidate? Only if we have good candidates to choose from. And even then - comon' as Homer says "democracy just doesn't work." How can any one think otherwise after Mary Carey lost? It must have been part of the Diebold conspiracy.
The problem with DREs is that there's really no way to prove it wasn't.
Not only was it invented in the Advanced Technology group, but Apple sent representatives to congress and the FCC and did the glad-handing that got the bandwidth approved.
They also ran it through the approvals process and got it made into a standard. If you're using 802.11, thank apple.
The same goes for Firewire, though with IBM's support as a new mass media standard. If you like your 1394 video camera and the ability to transfer data directly to your PC, thank apple.
Now USB isn't Apple, USB was Intel. Apple resisted USB because it came between ADB and 1394, but they gave in.
The founders were very careful not to inject God into the discourse and founding principles, and to carefully protect the public from any hint of state mandated religion. After all, many had no respect for organized religion and Thomas Paine was, as Roosevelt said, "a dirty little atheist."
If you've ever read anything about the history of the time, you'd know that the country was founded by a collection of religious freaks and social rebels, both of whom objected to a 'state religion' as was the law under British Rule.
It was thanks to the recognition of the suffering of the Shakers and Puritans and Quakers and all the other freaks that ran from or were chased out by the Church of England that separation of church and state is enshrined in the constitution.
Reading the writings of our Founding Fathers you will find they tend to refer to "Nature has made" rather than "God has made," and often direct condemnations.
And while you pay lip service to the concept, it's a tortured argument to ascribe "freedom from religion" to objections about the pledge. Nobody is suggesting that religion be stripped from the public discourse, just as the "prayer in school" arguments are predicated on and propagated by bizarre and dissonant misrepresentation: anyone can pray in school, to any deity they want, but the teacher cannot force the children to pray nor by coercive pressure outcast a child. Evangelicals will never comprehend the reason for this, but more rational people will have little trouble seeing the parallel: if you're a devout Christian, would you want your children reciting satanic prayers? Do unto others...
Unfortunately the Christian fundamentalists choose to interpret their savior's guiding principle as "if I were a heathen, would I want an Evangelical to force me to see The Path and strip me of my culture - of course I would!"
The courts have been fairly good about this, they've never in any way blocked private expressions of religious fervor, nor have they blocked, for example, any student's private practice. What they've done is tread very carefully a fine line of blocking any actions which might be perceived as state sanction of a particular religion. This is entirely in keeping with what you claim to understand: freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion.
In the case of the paean to God in the pledge of allegiance, its nothing more than a bizarre anti-communist cold war brain fart has been loosed in our society by the Knights of Columbus, and it's stench has wafted from decade to decade. This is not the work of our Founding Fathers, but a modern insertion in 1954 by McCarthyites to emphasize a Christian distinction between us and the Godless Communists. It was ill conceived then and obsolete now.
By deleting it we will restore our Great Nation to the Guiding Principles of the Founding Fathers: Freedom OF Religion, and to the original intent of the pledge. Bellamy's own writings indicate he would have fought the insertion of a prayer into his pledge, which he fought to include an appeal to equality, unfortunately most state superintendents of education on his committee were against equality for women and African Americans.
"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." - James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785
"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced, propagate
I have a mac II ci with a Daystar 60mhz PPC601 upgrade in it. It's my mail client database server and runs Claris Emailer on system 7.6.
It's run, continuously, and without a reboot, for about 3 years now, when the power supply failed. It had run continuously for about 5 years before that.
It does it's job and there's no reason to replace it. When I use it for sending mail, which I do occasionally, it still puts the results of my keypresses up on the screen faster than I can type...
I figure it might be late 1988 vintage, through more probably early 1989. I inherited it in 1990, and have used it continuously since.
Oh, I also have a Mac Portable of the same vintage I used until about two years ago when the battery finally stopped working. It'll hold a small motorcycle battery so it might come back yet. The advantages is it has over my 700mhz dell are a real, solid, desktop grade keyboard, the reflective screen looks great in direct sunlight, it doesn't flake out on a summer day, and 12 real hours of battery life.
If only I could get a SCSI to 802.11b pod for it...
It is not possible, legally or physically, to "steal" data. It is not possible to "pirate" data.
It is guerilla antitrust.
Nothing more, nothing less.
It may be illegal, but it isn't theft.
The MPAA is taking a legally defensible and appropriate action to control the dissemination of data.
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
Quotes from Thomas Jefferson To Isaac McPherson; Monticello, August 13, 1813.
The bill would provide for an award of reasonable attorney's fees and costs to a prevailing plaintiff.
A very european concept we've yet to embrace - that the instigator of a lawsuit endure some liability that the court find the suit wihtout merit.
Were you to be sued under the provisions of this law and was the suit to be found without merit, you should have some confidence, and no trouble, in retaining first rate representation to retain your right to send non-commercial email to whomever you want.
Any individual or organization making a practice of filing suits under this law or using it as a pretense for poorly researched barristry might find the effort highly counterproductive.
Besides, unless you're advertising something, you're exempt. For example, it might be prudent to avoid suggesting that the subject of your critisicm view your pay-access only site to see how it "should be done." Otherwise, it's hard to see how a critical message could be construed as meeting the following:
" (c) "Commercial e-mail advertisement" means any electronic mail message initiated for the purpose of advertising or promoting the lease, sale, rental, gift offer, or other disposition of any property, goods, services, or extension of credit."
It actually reads quite well and seems suprisingly well informed, though I always write "bandwidth," not "band width."
It really was worth the hype. Disney himself (grandson of the Walt) introduced it, and was justifiably proud of it. It's being introduced to compete for an Oscar. The joke was "imagine having your animated short up against Salvador Dali and Walt Disney."
Anyway, it's a surprisingly effective melding of Dali imagery and Disney animation. The animator at Disney who had done the original work is still alive and still working at Disney, and worked to finish the movie, and the original soundtrack was restored for it.
It's short, but if there's a screening, it's worth going just to see it. There's so much detail that the video transfer will be meaningfully less.
The poster is, in the main, correct in his ASSertation, but there are underlying justifications to the extraction:
First, classical computers may, to a crude degree, be considered "powerful" as a function of their clock speed and complexity. Roughly this power has been increasing at an exponential rate according to "Moore's Law."
Quantum computers are entirely different in a way that matters for certain classes of problems, particularly sorting and testing. These classes of problems are well suited, for example, to "brute force" breaking encryption. A quantum computer's "power" in solving this class of problem increases to the power of the number of "entangled cubits", a number which has roughly doubled every two years as compared to Moore's 18 month period - and to classical computing's roughly linear increase in power with complexity.
Moore's "law" isn't a law at all, but has been useful in predicting computational power. This reformulation I propose is valid in hindsight over a trivially short observation period. It does seem like a useful exercise to think about the potentials of quantum computers and to make a "what if" sort of assessment of the future of computing.
The statement that only a few quantum transistors have thus far been assembled, is not entirely true. First, the computational structures of quantum computers and classical computers are not precisely analogous, second quantum computers have been used to perform calculations according to prediction in organized structures more complex than an equivalent "transistor."
The poster is, in the main, correct in his ASSertation, but there are underlying justifications to the extraction:
First, classical computers may, to a crude degree, be considered "powerful" as a function of their clock speed and complexity. Roughly this power has been increasing at an exponential rate according to "Moore's Law."
Quantum computers are entirely different in a way that matters for certain classes of problems, particularly sorting and testing. These classes of problems are well suited, for example, to "brute force" breaking encryption. A quantum computer's "power" in solving this class of problem increases to the power of the number of "entangled cubits", a number which has roughly doubled every two years as compared to Moore's 18 month period - and to classical computing's roughly linear increase in power with complexity.
Moore's "law" isn't a law at all, but has been useful in predicting computational power. This reformulation I propose is valid in hindsight over a trivially short observation period. It does seem like a useful exercise to think about the potentials of quantum computers and to make a "what if" sort of assessment of the future of computing.
The statement that only a few quantum transistors have thus far been assembled, is not entirely true. First, the computational structures of quantum computers and classical computers are not precisely analogous, second quantum computers have been used to perform calculations according to prediction in organized structures more complex than an equivalent "transistor."
OK - lame - I just read it off my own graph. Going to 20 years, excel barfs. At 19 years it's 10^224, 225 seems rounder, two decades is less specific than 19 years. I used increments of decades rather than years as an admission of wide tolerance.
Quantum cryptography is very interesting--an absolutely bizarre manifestation of one of the most spooky and anti-intuitive features of quantum mechanics. The very premise gave Einstein fits.
But where RSA is used (and, barring an as of yet undiscovered in the open world weakness, elliptic curve cryptography) quantum cryptography has no application.
Quantum cryptography is built on the quantum entanglement of photon pairs, who's wave function must remain un-collapsed by measurement or perturbation until decode. This feature is both quantum cryptography's strength and weakness:
It's a strength because any Eve eavesdropping is irrefutably revealed.
It's a weakness because it limits the applications to such Alices and Bobs where between actual original photons may be reliably transmitted.
RSA and various other "Newtonian" cryptographic schemes make use of mathematical transforms rather than physical properties of individual particles and survive re-transmission with their essential properties intact; for example, over a packet switched network.
What RSA may not ultimately stand a chance against are quantum computers, which according to a variation of Moore's law I might have been the first to state (at DEFCON 9), will within a decade surpass then available classical computers and will (in theory) be exceptionally good at cracking encrypted documents.
Assuming the NSA doesn't already have a good working quantum computer...
And assuming it's possible to continue adding entangled qubits...
Anyway, Moores law says the power of classical computers increases as 2^(Y/1.5), where Y is years. So far, roughly, quantum computers are increasing in power as 2^2^(Y/2), which should make em about 10^225 times as powerful as today's classical computers in 2 decades, and if that turns out to be so, then RSA really won't stand a chance. It might be a bummer for some: 4096 bit PGP keys are assumed to be safe against, for example, the combined efforts of all computers to be built according to Moores law between now and any normal lifetime, or at least well past the statute of limitations. But if quantum computer development continues apace, that assumption may be problematically flawed.
But it's not quantum encryption that's the threat, it's quantum computers. Quantum encryption isn't any more unbreakable than whatever data method underlays it, though it's a fine way to transmit a stream of random numbers. The "key" is that it is, apparently, physics-ally impossible to intercept the stream of photons without causing a measurable effect. So Alice and Bob can be absolutely sure their one time pad is known only to them...
as long as no one is looking over their shoulders...
While Simpson's tech background is beyond reproach (and he's really quite a talented writer, damn him) and Selker is a first rate inventor, being smart doesn't mean you can't be wrong.
...Or perhaps taken out of context by a once academic and critical magazine that now survives by making tech "readable" and exciting, and by following Wired's ill-conceived lead in embracing a Marshall McLuhan-esqe embrace of subjectivity.
The reason some people don't "get" that it's "dishonest" to copy and distribute copyrighted works without permission is that it is not dishonest; nor is it theft, nor is it piracy. Music is not "for sale", nor can it ever be any more than the fire on my candle be owned by another even if I lit it from he. CD's are for sale, subgrants of temporary monopoly rights are offered for a fee, but information is not owned. That's not to say it's not "illegal" to make unauthorized copies of copyrighted works: it is.
If you work for an employer you solve problems for them or do labor for them and they presumably pay you for your effort, but neither you nor they "own" your ideas, even if they claim a temporary monopoly on the application or dissemination of your ideas if you contractually grant them the right to make such claim and wave such right yourself. To do so they apply for or presume an implicitly granted monopoly under the auspices of the constitutional clause which permits temporary monopolies as a method to further the progress of science and the useful arts, but this is not ownership, not even temporary ownership, it is a granted temporary monopoly.
The copyright holder's industry has so successfully perverted the language around this subject that people simply can't think about it rationally, but try: if you could own an idea... what would you own? If you tell me, where is your idea? In my head? Do you now "own" a part of my brain? A particular organization of chemicals and polarizations? A pattern of magnetic fields or electrical charges? You have a right to tell me what to do with my brain? How to vocalize my thoughts? What I can remember? Memory is a copy, and a copy is theft, therefore memory is theft. Forget every copyrighted song you've ever heard now, or pay $100,000 per instance...
Instead of seeking parallels from the absurd oxymoron of "intellectual property," consider other monopolies, such as electric power. Does the monopoly they hold confer property rights on the intangible concept of the distribution of power in a geographic region?
It's illegal for you to set up your own powergrid not because the power company "owns" the concept of the distribution of power, but because We The People have decided that it is in Our best interest that we not have 100 power poles in every yard and separate distribution networks feeding into different houses. But We may choose to end the monopoly if We The People feel that doing so better serves Our needs. That is it "may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body."
It is unquestionably against the law to distribute without authorization copyrighted works (or even to sing "Happy Birthday" in public) under the constitutionally questionable DMCA, but such laws remain constitutional only in as much as they fulfill the mandate that by enforcing an "embarrassing monopoly" on the "fugitive fermentations of an individual brain" that We The People benefit more thus than We lose from the deprivation of the public domain.
Personally, I think it has become obvious that copyright holders have unfairly seized control of the debate and turned the power of their granted monopolies to de facto property rights to the great and unconstitutional detriment of the progress of science and the arts. Fighting the wholesale piracy of the public domain by copyright holders is not "dishonest" but a critical battle between true patriots protecting this Nation from piracy and theft by profiteers and miscreants like the DMCA and RIAA that steal the culture of our children and children's children from the public domain by dishonesty and bribery.
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver
My biomass numbers came from a longer non-/. email exchange about long term energy sources. The biomass numbers were in reference to an alternative of using ag-waste as feedstock to a chemical conversion process changingworldtech.com, and came from a university class. And I see that between revisions I slipped a decimal - the article says 1/40th, or 2.5%, or perhaps applied a 10% conversion efficiency step somewhere and didn't back it out when I quoted the number.
The strength of materials numbers came from the Ryerson Catalog (except the strength of music wire, which comes from a music wire company). The Bamboo strength is the weighted results of various references (lab and university results weighted heavily and about 1/2 the strength value quoted by bamboo-centric web sites that apparently did not do primary testing). Aluminum costs and other data were checked against the admittedly biased aluminum association website (www.aluminum.org).
Your references on biomass conversion are far better and and quite helpful.
As for the other energy flow references, they were taken from my own emails, but the primary references are:
I think the bamboo bike is really cool from a cost perspective, but it's not really any more renewable than an aluminum one, nor having a net advantageous resource budget despite the obvious, intuitive expectation that it would.
The matter system on this planet is closed loop.
While this is not entirely true, some 40,000 tons of space borne dust land on our planet and we may someday mine extra-planetary bodies, for arguments sake all the aluminum we're going to use is here now. If we continue to use it all the bauxite will be gone some day, and from then on, all aluminum will be recycled.
However, long before that day all aluminum will be recycled because it costs 20X as much to make aluminum from Bauxite as it does to remelt it from scrap. The aluminum industry uses all the scrap aluminum it can get because the final product is just as valuable as aluminum from ore, but the profit is very different.
So aluminium the matter is a renewable resource, just like the carbon in bamboo, except to reuse aluminum it need merely be remelted via heat (typically electrical power, though a solar furnace could be used), and the carbon in bamboo must be oxidized and reduced (typically by rotting or burning and then photosynthesis).
Most domestic aluminum production happens in the pacific northwest where the power is provided by dams, a renewable resource, but certainly much of it is provided by oxidizing hydrocarbons to produce CO2 and H2O, both end state products that require substantial energy to reduce to reduce back to something chemically useful. This return cycle of oxidized hydrocarbon energy production is managed by the biomass of the world, and is driven by solar power via photosynthesis at 0.2% net efficiency, just as bamboo production is.
The energy system on this planet is constant rate
All energy on this planet comes from the sun. The sun has provided a net energy surplus for a few million years, most of it stored in reduced hydrocarbons (about half in oil and half in methane hydrates, and a comparatively inconsequential amount in leftover fissile heavy atoms). The world's total carbon reserves (1.6E13 bbls oil equivalent) contain enough energy to provide current consumption (globally 1.2E14 Kwh/year) rates for 221 years. If the rest of the world catches up with US consumption rates all the reduced carbon in the world will only last 38 years.
So, sooner or later (within 200 years, longer if there's a big global war or other population reducing event, much shorter if growth continues) all our energy will come from solar power directly as we will have consumed the planets "life savings" of net reduced carbon.
Photosynthesis is 0.2% efficient. Photovoltaics are currently about 10% efficient (20X more) in commercial applications (7.5% efficient over the life of the device) and efficiencies of over 30% are achievable.
To meet next year's global energy demands (1.2E14 Kwh, not including firewood) would take only 6.5E7 M2 of commercially available solar panels for $1.3E10 at current retail. The world will spend $4.4E11 on oil alone next year. If we spent 5% extra on oil (global tax) we could fully fund global solar power within a year. Interestingly, to meet the US's entire current energy demands with solar electric, we would need to cover about half of our roads, at no net change in albumen.
Within 200 years, and probably within 50, all the energy used in the production of aluminum will be direct solar.
Bamboo vs. Aluminum just isn't that obvious
Bamboo is a very impressive material, basically a single orientation composite, which can be easily reinforced against torsion and it's comparatively low modulus can be compensated for with larger diameter tubes in a bicycle, but it is not obvious that it's a more efficient use of land to grow bamboo than to use solar power to recycle aluminum into new bicycles.
But we have a long way to go on energy use and recycling, and so bamboo is an o
Taxes pay into a pool from which the federal government provides services to the people of the united states; various programs benefit different groups, usefully divided by income, though other groupings are meaningful.
Government income is collected from the population at rates largely divided by personal income. Other groupings are meaningful, but for this argument, wealth is the most useful. There are many different taxes, some are "progressive," meaning the wealthier pay a higher percentage of their net income such as income tax, and "regressive" meaning the poor pay a higher percentage of their net income, such as sales taxes and gasoline taxes.
Everyone but the most lucky of the "lucky duckies" (as the wall street journal likes to call the destitute) pays taxes. Even those below poverty pay sales taxes and usage fees on subsidized infrastructure. To the poor, these regressive taxes represent a far higher percentage of their net income than the wealthy. The luckiest duckies of all are, of course, the homeless who scavenge food from dumpsters - they don't have to pay any taxes at all! And, of course, people like Leona "only the little people pay taxes" Helmsley...
In as much as Bush has lowered the top tax rates, is attempting to eliminate the "death tax" on estates worth more than $2M, reduced capital gains tax (the poor don't tend to have a lot of money in the market), etc. he has lowered the tax burden on the wealthy far more than he has for the poor, even as a percentage of pre-bush tax rates. That is he's flattening the overall tax rate. He is taking a tiny bit less tax money from the working poor, true, butt...
Part of the federal tax system was used to support state and local programs. The states and local municipalities use the federal monies to support services that most state residents consider essential: police, fire, emergency medical care, public education. Now that Bush's efforts have caused a reduction in available monies, the states and local municipalities have been forced to raise taxes to offset the lost income such that they can continue to put out fires, catch murderers, and replace the lamps in stop lights etc. State revenues are largely dependent on sales and use taxes. These are either flat taxes (sales) or constant taxes (usage, water, sewerage, etc. for the provision of services that all people use roughly equally regardless of income). As the burden of taxes is lifted from the shoulders of the rich, it falls on the poor. Sorry to disappoint, but "Voodoo economics" (Bush the Elder) doesn't work, as Reagan proved once, and Bush has proved again. Cutting taxes on the rich does not magically cause revenue to appear. The Laffer curve really was a joke, but only the rich get it. Taxes have been cut for the rich and the poor are paying the bills.
Now you state that those living in Poverty pay no taxes. I've made it clear, I believe, that you're simply mistaken about that, but lets clarify and say there is a minimum for which there is no federal income tax (not true for social security, which is a highly regressive tax, since there is a cap on the total amount paid, but still...). Only about 10% of the population lives in poverty, there's a majority between the top 25% and the bottom 10% that do pay taxes. The further down the tax scale you go, the less the benefit of the Bush tax cuts, the greater the burden of the consequent state and local tax hikes.
Take less from the rich, get it back from the poor.
But wait - that's still not all! That's just the income side. The government provides services, and these services can be divided by the wealth of the recipient, though less clearly than taxation.
The Bush administration has cut government services that tend to benefit the poor and protect the interests of future generations. To be brief (as possible) environmental laws protect the poor disproportionately since poor people are disproportionately located near pollution sources, are generally dependent on municipal
One convenient thing about this desperate onslaught against reason and the constitution by the copyright industry is that as the offense is repeated, so to may the attempt at defense.
I read with some dismay about the Author, Consumer and Computer Owner Protection and Security Act of 2003, or ACCOPS introduced by representatives Conyers and Berman. Please remind them at the next opportunity of the text of the 8th clause of the constitution:
"The Congress shall have the power.... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"
There is a critical point here, carefully obfuscated by the RIAA and it's minions - there is no such thing as "Intellectual Property."
There is a concept in law called a "Natural Right," and it is generally accepted that people have a natural right to propriety. But as Jefferson was explicitly clear on, there is no natural right to "own" an idea:
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea..."
Copyright does not protect property, it is not about protecting property; it is about promoting science and the useful arts. Copyright is not a property right; it is a temporary monopoly. Violating copyright is not theft, it is not piracy; it is guerilla anti-trust.
This distinction is quite clear in the constitutional grant of exclusive right, that such grant would not be obviously self-justified as it would be for property, but that such right is justified only in as much as it fulfills the noble social good of "promoting the progress of science and the useful arts."
Today fear of over-reaching laws wielded by greedy institutions has a broad chilling effect on innovation: science and the useful arts. ACCOPS further extends the damage done to innovation by such ill-conceived laws as the DMCA, CTEA and NET. Their only real purpose is to protect the profits of copyright holders by appropriating the public domain, and as much as they do so at the expense of innovation, they are unconstitutional. It is time to undo these egregious mistakes, not to extend them.
Thomas Jefferson was quite clear on his views of copyright and these views are enshrined in the 8th clause. It is a grant of an "embarrassing monopoly" and not a right; explicitly the fugitive fermentations of a mind cannot be owned.
Conyers and Berman need to hear and understand his words:
"It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, i
Actually it's a criminal offense if it falls under NET, CTEA, or DMCA. It used to be a civil offense if there was no quid pro quo exchange, and each civil violation would have made a person liable for some actual loss, though it wasn't something that was enforced.
But after the MIT BBS case, which had to be dropped because there was no quid pro quo, the law was changed to account for one to many, but it was written in such a way as to criminalize equally one to many (new) and one to one violations (which were just civil, and probably unprocecutable). Thanks to this, if you tape a TV show for your mom (or a single song, or even sing her "happy birthday" in public) you have committed a federal crime which carries more significant penalties than manslaughter in most states.
There is such a tremendous disconnect between what people think is right and fair and what the law states, that it should serve as a red flag for constitutional review. (Lessig's outcome indicates that this may be futile without a major shift in perception.)
What one should watch for is an attempt by the copyright industry to create an obfuscatory sea change in the perception of copyright, steering it entirely free of it's constitutional mandate. They have been fairly successful in getting people to refer to guerilla antitrust as "theft," and have harped ad nauseum their view that copying a song is tantamount to walking into a record store and stealing it.
But saying so doesn't make it so. They are so painfully, obviously, hilariously wrong, that most people don't even try to think about it and soon it will require a child (or Thomas Jefferson) to point out the obvious: if I walk into a record store and take a CD, the CD is gone. If I copy the a song, the original is still there, "as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."
A person may "own" a copyright, but that does not mean they "own" the information that is copyritten. You cannot own data, man. We, the People of the United States of America, to promote the progress of science and useful arts, grant for a limited time an "embarassing monopoly" to authors and inventors.
This is a critical distinction which has been carefully papered over by the entertainment industry and by their employees in congress: copyright is not and never was about protecting property or profit, it is a means to an end: the promotion of progress and science. It is constitutional only so much as it achieves that end. And it "may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody."
The history of tablet computing is littered with failure, and MS is joining the parade 10 years late (though, as a history lesson, MS crushed Go by promising pen-windows 3.1 and forcing vendors to dump Go to get seeded with pen windows, then after Go tanked, they pulled the plug).
If you could get a touch/pen interface for trivial incremental cost and no resolution/weight/durability penalty, people would probably go for it. Maybe someday, but not yet.
Until then, as for Apple taking the niche: I worked on Scribe, the ATG's predecessor to the PenMac, a project so lost to history you can only find references to references on the web.
And the PenMac had, back in 95/96, many of the features of the new windows versions, including pressure sensitivity, a very accurate neural net based natural handwriting engine, etc. It even seemed quite a bit more responsive on that old 68020. It sold briefly in Japan for Kanji entry...
One problem with tablets... who writes anymore? Have you tried to write a letter recently? If you're less than 20, you probably never did. It's a compelling paradigm, but ultimately retro. Honestly, I can't anymore; my hand gets tired after a few paragraphs. Sure I could if I did it every day but I still wouldn't write this much with a pen. (Would the quality of writing improve if we took away all the keyboards?)
To be sure, there are niche markets. It's a solid interface extension to existing touchscreen applications like POS and machine control, and it's a nice for sketching.
But niche markets won't make for profitable software or affordable hardware. The problem is, in a nutshell, if you do it really well - get the tactile interaction just right, eliminate the display parallax, get the contrast up, get the pen as light and durable as a regular pen, even make the display flexible, make the whole thing weigh only a few hundred grams, and make it "instant-on," uncrashable, and with failsafe archival data retention and you've got....
Iran Hostage crisis ---> Started under Carter. Ended under Reagan.
Actually it started in 1953 when Eisenhower ordered the CIA to overthrow the popularly elected (as in a real democratic election) prime minister of Iran, Mossadegh, by pushing Reza Pahlava, the Shah, to expel him. Riots ensued, the Shah fled, the CIA put the riots down, brought the Shaw back, and trained SAVAK; who went on to earn Amnesty International's award for "worst human rights record on the planet" in 1976. That's the year Carter was elected, he didn't take office 'till 77. I'm not sure how you can imply he was responsible for the revolt in 79 to overthrow a brutal and repressive regime.
As for Reagan's illustrious involvement in the hostage crisis: He traded weapons to the Ayatollah Khomeini, the forces of darkness, to secure their release. Even Reagan admitted it. A very clever move, now known as the October Surprise, which was significant in defeating Carter.
Star Wars ---> Dreamed up in the 70's continues today. Even Clinton continued to fund it.
Grenada ---> Warehouses full of Soviet weapons seized just before the 'rebellion' was to start. Talk to 82nd airborne vets about what they found and saw before you think it was a joke.
Greneda was no joke for the Grenadines. They had made the mistake of electing Maurice Bishop who, alas, was mildly socialist. CIA destabilization began shortly thereafter under Carter in '79, actually, but given the animosity and outright betrayal of Carter by the UberRight in the defense organization (Ollie et al, see above), it's not clear he knew anything about it. Given that Grenada was a managed news event, you should be careful of any "news" you read about it, and the dangerous weapons they had. Remember pfc Lynch's "Rescue."
War on drugs ---> Bush Sr., Nancy was "Just say No to drugs." Not to mention drug use DID decline through the end of the 80's and early 90's. The war is 'lost' because we (people and government) lost focus not because it could not be won.
US prohibition has quite a long history, all of it embarrassing. Reagan did declare the "War on Drugs," but what that really meant, and continues to mean is difficult to ascertain. One thing is for sure, it is not about helping people. Mentioning Gary Webb's careful and exceptionally well documented journalism runs contrary to the charade, but the evidence is strong that under Reagan the CIA was supporting the sale of cocaine in the US to fund the Contras after congress confronted the CIA's arms sales underwritten funding.
Central America ---> What part? And no fair bringing up Nicaragua. You already have Iran-Contra on the list. And if you thing the Sandinistas were better than the Contras you're frikin' nuts.
The difference is the Sandinistas were the popularly elected government and the Contras were the private army of Samoza, evacuated, rearmed, retrained, and reinserted
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Your comment deserves to be modded up, not because I'm out of date, but because it is based on data, or at least reporting on the data. It's good to look at real data to make your choice. If you find this data convincing, go for it.
First, to dismiss the findings of the liver inflammation study: no health professional would suggest a high simple sugar diet - eg sucrose etc. Such diets are long associated with obesity and liver and pancreas disease. There's nothing to indicate that these subjects were eating brown rice and whole wheat bread for their carbohydrates rather than fries and a coke. Without that data, the study doesn't mean much.
The USA Today article presents a summary of three smaller studies that found some interesting results - and indeed they are interesting. But the results are presented as a meta-study of smaller studies. The problem is that the association of high intakes of animal fats with coronary disease and obesity is the consequence of hundreds of studies. Taken as a whole, the data overwhelming contradicts the Atkins diet. It's not fair to choose only supportive studies for inclusion in a meta study.
The most reported and best structured study is the Harvard one, and it's generated a lot of press. But note that the Atkins organization paid for it. Paid research overwhelmingly achieves results in keeping with the sponsor's goals. Contradictory results don't' get published, not to demean the author, but if she found the opposite, we wouldn't have heard about it. How many studies did Atkins pay for that haven't found results? This study used 7 - SEVEN whole subjects on each diet. Compare this with more rigorous studies, such as this one which found a clear correlation between heart disease and animal fats: 80,000 nurses. It's your heart - which results do you trust?
But a more in-depth review of the results provides more details, and as always the results are less astonishing than the general press makes them seem. It's well known that it takes more energy to digest protein than carbohydrate. The subjects lost 2 pounds per week, not the 20 pounds of the absurd claims, and the difference in weight loss between equal Calorie subjects differentially fed protein or carbohydrate was only 20%, which is about the inefficiency of high protein processing. Like she says - it's not smoke and mirrors. Plus her subjects were fed fats considered relatively healthy - not hamburger patties, for example, but fish and chicken.
If you want to believe, just click your heels and eat your fatty beef (as long as we're not co-insured), but there's nothing in this study that should make you think doing so is healthy. It does suggest further study - I find the data unconvincing, but it definitely suggests, if it holds up in larger, non-atkins funded studies, that it may be possible to lose slightly more weight on the high fat and protein diet she cooked up vs the high carbohydrate diet she cooked up, at least as long as she's doing the cooking... But the numbers look to me to be more disproving of the Atkins diet than proof - here's why: it is well known that of the three basic calorie sources (carbohydrate, protein, fat) only protein has a substantially lower bioavailable caloric value than it's bomb calorimetric data would indicate. This is not new, mind you, but well known in "traditional" nutrition.
For example soy protein isolate provides about 3.28 Calories per gram, compared to roughly 4 Calories per gram for carbohydrate. Compare the two 1800 Calorie men's groups. Calorimetric values for the protein in their diets would be 4 Calories per gram: therefore the high fat group got 135 gms of protein per day, and the high carbohydrate group got 67.5, meaning the high protein group got 50 fewer available Calories per day. If they
Might want to drop the fanaticism there. Check the studies again. The best there are say you lose weight just like on any restricted calorie diet. Like all things in this arena, some studies show conflicting data, but that doesn't make it right yet.
WRT heart disease, there's nothing magic about the Atkins diet. There are peoples on earth (generally rotund Eskimos for example) who eat diets like it, and people who eat the opposite (generally skinny consumers of Asiatic diets). Across all, more saturated fat makes more heart attacks. Look, if you and the other fanatics keep this up for 50 years or so, and if you all end up dying less, I'll believe it. Until then there's no good reason to, all exiting data points against it.
Re: the mystical powers of ketosis: guess what - the energy is in the fat, not how you consume it. If you wee'd out a highly energetic fatty urine, you'd sure know it. Either the energy is burned, excreted, or stored. Energetic molecules do not make it through your kidney, unless you've got serious problems.
What you mean to say is that the body is only able to extract about 75% of the energy available in the fat, the rest goes to thermodynamic inefficiency due to an alternate metabolic pathway. That's a fine argument and there may even be cases where there's some truth to it... maybe... but basic thermodynamics still applies - inefficiency means heat. You still burn the calories, you just don't get to store them. You do not pee them out.
Furthermore, what you're saying is that one gram of fat becomes heats 2kg of body weight 1 degree plus 7/9 of a gram of fat. Gram for gram, if you're correct, carbohydrate would still be less fattening (and protein slightly less still).
Look, go for it dude. If you believe, more power to you, but stop claiming that you've discovered the holy grail. You're on a diet, neither more nor less well founded or scientific than grapefruit or whatever. Not yet anyway. Collect some data and good luck. For me, I'll stick to eating a well balanced meal and getting regular exercise. It's working fine so far.
OK kids, all crap aside, lets go back to basics:
Any energy that goes into your mouth goes one of 3 places:
1) You burn it. Literally - and burning food generates heat. Each gram of fat contains 9 Calories, which is equivalent to jogging for one minute. That's 9000 calories (little c) which will heat your average 200lb sysadmin 0.2 degrees F. There are 27 grams in an ounce - that's a half hour run per ounce of fat. Think about how sweaty that would make you. This is an important thermodynamic consideration we'll get back to.
2) You store it. One gram of fat in becomes one gram of fat on your ass. One gram of carbohydrate or protein in becomes 1/2 gram of fat on your ass. There's no magic here; joules don't vanish.
3) You excrete it. This is what chiral analogs of various energy sources do, such as Olestra. If this was happening, you would know it; the term is anal leakage. Sugars you cannot digest, like the sugars in beans, create equally socially endearing outputs.
Now the article claims that Atkins overclocks the body. Crap. If it did you'd get hot. Run a motor fast, it gets hot. Run your body fast, it gets hot. Take amphetamines, you start to twitch and sweat. Thermodynamics. You can't beat it. Atkins can't beat it. Atkins does not make you hot. If you burned an extra pound of fat you'd heat your body to boiling. It does not accelerate your metabolism, it does not perform any insulin magic. The whole thing is the stunningly ignorant optimism of the hopefully overweight.
But people do lose weight on it - or so it seems (statistically this isn't really borne out by actual controlled studies, but hey, who needs science when we can make choices based on anecdotes). Why? Because in a normal diet 60-70% of your calories come from carbohydrates and you cut them you and you're on a calories restricted diet. Bingo. Eat nothing at all and keep your activity level up and you'll lose about 1/2 pound each day (8.2oz of fat = 2000 calories). Eat more calories than nothing and prorate that weight lose. Joules are joules, they body isn't happy about wasting them, and if it does, bacteria won't and your cube neighbors won't be happy about that.
So much for the insulin magic and ketosis crap, but there's this wacky claim of "satiety " the claim that fat and protein is a high satiety food and that if you eat it, you'll eat less total. Could be. Maybe for some people, not for others. If it works for you, go for it, just don't make magic claims or act like the self-righteous health nuts who claim to Received The Counterintuitive Truth.
As for the health of it all, if you stop eating processed sugars, like every nutritionist including Atkins has been saying for 50 years, you'll generally lose weight, probably a lot of it, and you will be healthier. My mom used to call them "empty calories," but that's too kind. Sugars are bad, and Atkins is right about refined sugar (complex carbohydrates absorb more slowly, "glycemic index" crap aside) - you do tend to crash after (all nutritionists know this). Crash means metabolism temporarily slows. Slow metabolism means less calories burned. Not a lot less - watching TV burns 2.4 calories per minute, walking 2mph burns 2.8 - but a bit less, which means a small difference, a few grams of fat a day maybe. The big difference is eating less sugar - 4.5 Cal per M&M adds up fast.
As for the health of it, if you eat "too much" protein your piss will start to smell weird. If that happens back off. Otherwise it's not likely to kill you. Don't chow down on high saturated fats, the "Atkins helps heart disease" stuff is crap. If you lose weight your cholesterol level will drop, but that doesn't contradict about 50 years of very well documented data showing a direct correlations between saturated fat and heart disease, which strikes thin, otherwise healthy people too.
Skipping fruit is dumb, but it won't kill you if you're eating your veggies. All the vitamins and minerals are in vegetab
The ~NOLs are inventions of the Naval Ordinance Lab, curiously located out there in the corn fields; famously NiTiNOL and TerFeNOL, not exactly the the most overwhelmingly original names, they do sound techy.
The "latest" material, terfenol, exploits the giant magnetostrictive effect, which sounds even more brand new, but it isn't, having been discovered in the 1840s.
The high strain versions of this (and the thermally actuated "shape memory alloys") were developed in the 1940s for use in high powered sonar. They are generally used as replacements for voice coils and for the same reason. If you want to actuate your domestic structure, you can use a big one and keep it cool with LN2.
These materials are far too old to be covered by existing patents, so they're fabricated all over the world. Indeed, chinese manufacturers are in production.
Well, this could be true - but there are two problems: 1) it's a bit like currency - wouldn't it be harder to counterfeit if there were hundreds of currencies rather than just one? Not really, all you need to do is counterfeit the least secure to get rich. Similarly, all a nefarious zealot needs doo is throw one key county election, in one state to throw the national election, some lame backwater filled with confused old people, some distant dingleberry of a state... Just make some simple little ambiguous change and throw some small statistical number of votes from, say, the marginal winner, to, say, some random freak, and the wrong guy wins.
So 100 systems isn't really any more secure than one. But the same plan works if there's only 3 or maybe mostly only 1 voting system used. This argument about using contractors apes the ones made by partisan think tanks made up of the company execs scoring the $100M DRE contracts - but it's not only logically wrong, it's just plain wrong. 2) There are three vendors. Three. Two run on windows. Two. Two OS's to hack. But really all you need is to use Access to remotely edit the diebold databases in a dozen locations and you've won all the elections you need to ensure that all the key positions are filled by members of the party the DRE vendor explicitly supports, and who can prove that just because there were unprecedented 12 point swings that upset the leaders between the morning of the election and the afternoon that it wasn't just an anomaly... DRE's mean no recounts. They always get it right and they're just as secure as the windows 95 OS they were running on which we know is bulletproof.
Hell, it's just a parable for elections in general - eventually a system that works will be left? Only if there's a system that works to begin with. Let the people decide and we'll get a good candidate? Only if we have good candidates to choose from. And even then - comon' as Homer says "democracy just doesn't work." How can any one think otherwise after Mary Carey lost? It must have been part of the Diebold conspiracy.
The problem with DREs is that there's really no way to prove it wasn't.
The end of the concorde is really depressing. It, to me, fortells the demise of western culture.
The future itself was embodied in supersonic flight, space, and reaching the planets.
It's all dead now. The united states isn't even a space-faring nation any more.
Perhaps China and India will pick up the ball and carry humanity into the future.
Actually Apple did invent 802.11.
Not only was it invented in the Advanced Technology group, but Apple sent representatives to congress and the FCC and did the glad-handing that got the bandwidth approved.
They also ran it through the approvals process and got it made into a standard. If you're using 802.11, thank apple.
The same goes for Firewire, though with IBM's support as a new mass media standard. If you like your 1394 video camera and the ability to transfer data directly to your PC, thank apple.
Now USB isn't Apple, USB was Intel. Apple resisted USB because it came between ADB and 1394, but they gave in.
Same with PCI, AGP, and IDE...
You win some numerics and lose some acronyms.
The founders were very careful not to inject God into the discourse and founding principles, and to carefully protect the public from any hint of state mandated religion. After all, many had no respect for organized religion and Thomas Paine was, as Roosevelt said, "a dirty little atheist."
If you've ever read anything about the history of the time, you'd know that the country was founded by a collection of religious freaks and social rebels, both of whom objected to a 'state religion' as was the law under British Rule.
It was thanks to the recognition of the suffering of the Shakers and Puritans and Quakers and all the other freaks that ran from or were chased out by the Church of England that separation of church and state is enshrined in the constitution.
Reading the writings of our Founding Fathers you will find they tend to refer to "Nature has made" rather than "God has made," and often direct condemnations.
And while you pay lip service to the concept, it's a tortured argument to ascribe "freedom from religion" to objections about the pledge. Nobody is suggesting that religion be stripped from the public discourse, just as the "prayer in school" arguments are predicated on and propagated by bizarre and dissonant misrepresentation: anyone can pray in school, to any deity they want, but the teacher cannot force the children to pray nor by coercive pressure outcast a child. Evangelicals will never comprehend the reason for this, but more rational people will have little trouble seeing the parallel: if you're a devout Christian, would you want your children reciting satanic prayers? Do unto others...
Unfortunately the Christian fundamentalists choose to interpret their savior's guiding principle as "if I were a heathen, would I want an Evangelical to force me to see The Path and strip me of my culture - of course I would!"
The courts have been fairly good about this, they've never in any way blocked private expressions of religious fervor, nor have they blocked, for example, any student's private practice. What they've done is tread very carefully a fine line of blocking any actions which might be perceived as state sanction of a particular religion. This is entirely in keeping with what you claim to understand: freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion.
In the case of the paean to God in the pledge of allegiance, its nothing more than a bizarre anti-communist cold war brain fart has been loosed in our society by the Knights of Columbus, and it's stench has wafted from decade to decade. This is not the work of our Founding Fathers, but a modern insertion in 1954 by McCarthyites to emphasize a Christian distinction between us and the Godless Communists. It was ill conceived then and obsolete now.
By deleting it we will restore our Great Nation to the Guiding Principles of the Founding Fathers: Freedom OF Religion, and to the original intent of the pledge. Bellamy's own writings indicate he would have fought the insertion of a prayer into his pledge, which he fought to include an appeal to equality, unfortunately most state superintendents of education on his committee were against equality for women and African Americans.
"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." - James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785
"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced, propagate
I have a mac II ci with a Daystar 60mhz PPC601 upgrade in it. It's my mail client database server and runs Claris Emailer on system 7.6.
It's run, continuously, and without a reboot, for about 3 years now, when the power supply failed. It had run continuously for about 5 years before that.
It does it's job and there's no reason to replace it. When I use it for sending mail, which I do occasionally, it still puts the results of my keypresses up on the screen faster than I can type...
I figure it might be late 1988 vintage, through more probably early 1989. I inherited it in 1990, and have used it continuously since.
Oh, I also have a Mac Portable of the same vintage I used until about two years ago when the battery finally stopped working. It'll hold a small motorcycle battery so it might come back yet. The advantages is it has over my 700mhz dell are a real, solid, desktop grade keyboard, the reflective screen looks great in direct sunlight, it doesn't flake out on a summer day, and 12 real hours of battery life.
If only I could get a SCSI to 802.11b pod for it...
It is not possible, legally or physically, to "steal" data. It is not possible to "pirate" data.
It is guerilla antitrust.
Nothing more, nothing less.
It may be illegal, but it isn't theft.
The MPAA is taking a legally defensible and appropriate action to control the dissemination of data.
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
Quotes from Thomas Jefferson To Isaac McPherson; Monticello, August 13, 1813.
The bill would provide for an award of reasonable attorney's fees and costs to a prevailing plaintiff.
A very european concept we've yet to embrace - that the instigator of a lawsuit endure some liability that the court find the suit wihtout merit.
Were you to be sued under the provisions of this law and was the suit to be found without merit, you should have some confidence, and no trouble, in retaining first rate representation to retain your right to send non-commercial email to whomever you want.
Any individual or organization making a practice of filing suits under this law or using it as a pretense for poorly researched barristry might find the effort highly counterproductive.
Besides, unless you're advertising something, you're exempt. For example, it might be prudent to avoid suggesting that the subject of your critisicm view your pay-access only site to see how it "should be done." Otherwise, it's hard to see how a critical message could be construed as meeting the following:
" (c) "Commercial e-mail advertisement" means any electronic mail message initiated for the purpose of advertising or promoting the lease, sale, rental, gift offer, or other disposition of any property, goods, services, or extension of credit."
It actually reads quite well and seems suprisingly well informed, though I always write "bandwidth," not "band width."
It really was worth the hype. Disney himself (grandson of the Walt) introduced it, and was justifiably proud of it. It's being introduced to compete for an Oscar. The joke was "imagine having your animated short up against Salvador Dali and Walt Disney."
Anyway, it's a surprisingly effective melding of Dali imagery and Disney animation. The animator at Disney who had done the original work is still alive and still working at Disney, and worked to finish the movie, and the original soundtrack was restored for it.
It's short, but if there's a screening, it's worth going just to see it. There's so much detail that the video transfer will be meaningfully less.
The poster is, in the main, correct in his ASSertation, but there are underlying justifications to the extraction:
First, classical computers may, to a crude degree, be considered "powerful" as a function of their clock speed and complexity. Roughly this power has been increasing at an exponential rate according to "Moore's Law."
Quantum computers are entirely different in a way that matters for certain classes of problems, particularly sorting and testing. These classes of problems are well suited, for example, to "brute force" breaking encryption. A quantum computer's "power" in solving this class of problem increases to the power of the number of "entangled cubits", a number which has roughly doubled every two years as compared to Moore's 18 month period - and to classical computing's roughly linear increase in power with complexity.
Moore's "law" isn't a law at all, but has been useful in predicting computational power. This reformulation I propose is valid in hindsight over a trivially short observation period. It does seem like a useful exercise to think about the potentials of quantum computers and to make a "what if" sort of assessment of the future of computing.
The statement that only a few quantum transistors have thus far been assembled, is not entirely true. First, the computational structures of quantum computers and classical computers are not precisely analogous, second quantum computers have been used to perform calculations according to prediction in organized structures more complex than an equivalent "transistor."
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9801037
The poster is, in the main, correct in his ASSertation, but there are underlying justifications to the extraction:
First, classical computers may, to a crude degree, be considered "powerful" as a function of their clock speed and complexity. Roughly this power has been increasing at an exponential rate according to "Moore's Law."
Quantum computers are entirely different in a way that matters for certain classes of problems, particularly sorting and testing. These classes of problems are well suited, for example, to "brute force" breaking encryption. A quantum computer's "power" in solving this class of problem increases to the power of the number of "entangled cubits", a number which has roughly doubled every two years as compared to Moore's 18 month period - and to classical computing's roughly linear increase in power with complexity.
Moore's "law" isn't a law at all, but has been useful in predicting computational power. This reformulation I propose is valid in hindsight over a trivially short observation period. It does seem like a useful exercise to think about the potentials of quantum computers and to make a "what if" sort of assessment of the future of computing.
The statement that only a few quantum transistors have thus far been assembled, is not entirely true. First, the computational structures of quantum computers and classical computers are not precisely analogous, second quantum computers have been used to perform calculations according to prediction in organized structures more complex than an equivalent "transistor."
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9801037
OK - lame - I just read it off my own graph. Going to 20 years, excel barfs. At 19 years it's 10^224, 225 seems rounder, two decades is less specific than 19 years. I used increments of decades rather than years as an admission of wide tolerance.
And yes, it's a massive IF. Of course. But I think a rather interesting if, as such things go. Thus far QC is on track.Quantum cryptography is very interesting--an absolutely bizarre manifestation of one of the most spooky and anti-intuitive features of quantum mechanics. The very premise gave Einstein fits.
But where RSA is used (and, barring an as of yet undiscovered in the open world weakness, elliptic curve cryptography) quantum cryptography has no application.
Quantum cryptography is built on the quantum entanglement of photon pairs, who's wave function must remain un-collapsed by measurement or perturbation until decode. This feature is both quantum cryptography's strength and weakness:
It's a strength because any Eve eavesdropping is irrefutably revealed.
It's a weakness because it limits the applications to such Alices and Bobs where between actual original photons may be reliably transmitted.
RSA and various other "Newtonian" cryptographic schemes make use of mathematical transforms rather than physical properties of individual particles and survive re-transmission with their essential properties intact; for example, over a packet switched network.
What RSA may not ultimately stand a chance against are quantum computers, which according to a variation of Moore's law I might have been the first to state (at DEFCON 9), will within a decade surpass then available classical computers and will (in theory) be exceptionally good at cracking encrypted documents.
Assuming the NSA doesn't already have a good working quantum computer...
And assuming it's possible to continue adding entangled qubits...
Anyway, Moores law says the power of classical computers increases as 2^(Y/1.5), where Y is years. So far, roughly, quantum computers are increasing in power as 2^2^(Y/2), which should make em about 10^225 times as powerful as today's classical computers in 2 decades, and if that turns out to be so, then RSA really won't stand a chance. It might be a bummer for some: 4096 bit PGP keys are assumed to be safe against, for example, the combined efforts of all computers to be built according to Moores law between now and any normal lifetime, or at least well past the statute of limitations. But if quantum computer development continues apace, that assumption may be problematically flawed.
But it's not quantum encryption that's the threat, it's quantum computers. Quantum encryption isn't any more unbreakable than whatever data method underlays it, though it's a fine way to transmit a stream of random numbers. The "key" is that it is, apparently, physics-ally impossible to intercept the stream of photons without causing a measurable effect. So Alice and Bob can be absolutely sure their one time pad is known only to them...
as long as no one is looking over their shoulders...
While Simpson's tech background is beyond reproach (and he's really quite a talented writer, damn him) and Selker is a first rate inventor, being smart doesn't mean you can't be wrong.
The reason some people don't "get" that it's "dishonest" to copy and distribute copyrighted works without permission is that it is not dishonest; nor is it theft, nor is it piracy. Music is not "for sale", nor can it ever be any more than the fire on my candle be owned by another even if I lit it from he. CD's are for sale, subgrants of temporary monopoly rights are offered for a fee, but information is not owned. That's not to say it's not "illegal" to make unauthorized copies of copyrighted works: it is.
If you work for an employer you solve problems for them or do labor for them and they presumably pay you for your effort, but neither you nor they "own" your ideas, even if they claim a temporary monopoly on the application or dissemination of your ideas if you contractually grant them the right to make such claim and wave such right yourself. To do so they apply for or presume an implicitly granted monopoly under the auspices of the constitutional clause which permits temporary monopolies as a method to further the progress of science and the useful arts, but this is not ownership, not even temporary ownership, it is a granted temporary monopoly.
The copyright holder's industry has so successfully perverted the language around this subject that people simply can't think about it rationally, but try: if you could own an idea... what would you own? If you tell me, where is your idea? In my head? Do you now "own" a part of my brain? A particular organization of chemicals and polarizations? A pattern of magnetic fields or electrical charges? You have a right to tell me what to do with my brain? How to vocalize my thoughts? What I can remember? Memory is a copy, and a copy is theft, therefore memory is theft. Forget every copyrighted song you've ever heard now, or pay $100,000 per instance...
Instead of seeking parallels from the absurd oxymoron of "intellectual property," consider other monopolies, such as electric power. Does the monopoly they hold confer property rights on the intangible concept of the distribution of power in a geographic region?
It's illegal for you to set up your own powergrid not because the power company "owns" the concept of the distribution of power, but because We The People have decided that it is in Our best interest that we not have 100 power poles in every yard and separate distribution networks feeding into different houses. But We may choose to end the monopoly if We The People feel that doing so better serves Our needs. That is it "may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body."
It is unquestionably against the law to distribute without authorization copyrighted works (or even to sing "Happy Birthday" in public) under the constitutionally questionable DMCA, but such laws remain constitutional only in as much as they fulfill the mandate that by enforcing an "embarrassing monopoly" on the "fugitive fermentations of an individual brain" that We The People benefit more thus than We lose from the deprivation of the public domain.
Personally, I think it has become obvious that copyright holders have unfairly seized control of the debate and turned the power of their granted monopolies to de facto property rights to the great and unconstitutional detriment of the progress of science and the arts. Fighting the wholesale piracy of the public domain by copyright holders is not "dishonest" but a critical battle between true patriots protecting this Nation from piracy and theft by profiteers and miscreants like the DMCA and RIAA that steal the culture of our children and children's children from the public domain by dishonesty and bribery.
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver
Excellent post.
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My biomass numbers came from a longer non-/. email exchange about long term energy sources. The biomass numbers were in reference to an alternative of using ag-waste as feedstock to a chemical conversion process
changingworldtech.com, and came from a university class. And I see that between revisions I slipped a decimal - the article says 1/40th, or 2.5%, or perhaps applied a 10% conversion efficiency step somewhere and didn't back it out when I quoted the number.
The strength of materials numbers came from the Ryerson Catalog (except the strength of music wire, which comes from a music wire company). The Bamboo strength is the weighted results of various references (lab and university results weighted heavily and about 1/2 the strength value quoted by bamboo-centric web sites that apparently did not do primary testing). Aluminum costs and other data were checked against the admittedly biased aluminum association website (www.aluminum.org).
Your references on biomass conversion are far better and and quite helpful.
As for the other energy flow references, they were taken from my own emails, but the primary references are:
climate forcings (greenhouse contributions)
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research
Useful energy quantities (also in m&ms as a unit)
http://newton.umsl.edu/~philf/energies.gif
Total vegetative consumption
http://newton.umsl.edu/infophys/lsp.
Solar irradiance and variation thereof:
http://spaceresearch.nasa.gov/sts-107/1
Albedo and reflectance
http://lasp.colorado.edu/~avallone/a
http://eetd.lbl.gov/HeatIsland/
Detailed ref on solar data: http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/
Detailed data on solar panel efficiency in real daily light:
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy99osti/26909.p
Retail Solar costs http://www.wholesalesolar.com/
energy consumption data
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/ie
Energy consumption
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/brochure
Energy reserves
http://www.usgs.gov/public/press/public
http://www.iea.org/g8/
Carbon capacity
http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.af
Carbon output
http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming
Solar Costs
http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:3P2Cj
Solar Availability
http://courses.washington.edu/me342
Hydrates at SciAm
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID
Hydrates at DOE
http://www.fe.doe.gov/oil_gas/methanehydrate
Hydrates at USGS
http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydr
I think the bamboo bike is really cool from a cost perspective, but it's not really any more renewable than an aluminum one, nor having a net advantageous resource budget despite the obvious, intuitive expectation that it would.
The matter system on this planet is closed loop.
While this is not entirely true, some 40,000 tons of space borne dust land on our planet and we may someday mine extra-planetary bodies, for arguments sake all the aluminum we're going to use is here now. If we continue to use it all the bauxite will be gone some day, and from then on, all aluminum will be recycled.
However, long before that day all aluminum will be recycled because it costs 20X as much to make aluminum from Bauxite as it does to remelt it from scrap. The aluminum industry uses all the scrap aluminum it can get because the final product is just as valuable as aluminum from ore, but the profit is very different.
So aluminium the matter is a renewable resource, just like the carbon in bamboo, except to reuse aluminum it need merely be remelted via heat (typically electrical power, though a solar furnace could be used), and the carbon in bamboo must be oxidized and reduced (typically by rotting or burning and then photosynthesis).
Most domestic aluminum production happens in the pacific northwest where the power is provided by dams, a renewable resource, but certainly much of it is provided by oxidizing hydrocarbons to produce CO2 and H2O, both end state products that require substantial energy to reduce to reduce back to something chemically useful. This return cycle of oxidized hydrocarbon energy production is managed by the biomass of the world, and is driven by solar power via photosynthesis at 0.2% net efficiency, just as bamboo production is.
The energy system on this planet is constant rate
All energy on this planet comes from the sun. The sun has provided a net energy surplus for a few million years, most of it stored in reduced hydrocarbons (about half in oil and half in methane hydrates, and a comparatively inconsequential amount in leftover fissile heavy atoms). The world's total carbon reserves (1.6E13 bbls oil equivalent) contain enough energy to provide current consumption (globally 1.2E14 Kwh/year) rates for 221 years. If the rest of the world catches up with US consumption rates all the reduced carbon in the world will only last 38 years.
So, sooner or later (within 200 years, longer if there's a big global war or other population reducing event, much shorter if growth continues) all our energy will come from solar power directly as we will have consumed the planets "life savings" of net reduced carbon.
Photosynthesis is 0.2% efficient. Photovoltaics are currently about 10% efficient (20X more) in commercial applications (7.5% efficient over the life of the device) and efficiencies of over 30% are achievable.
To meet next year's global energy demands (1.2E14 Kwh, not including firewood) would take only 6.5E7 M2 of commercially available solar panels for $1.3E10 at current retail. The world will spend $4.4E11 on oil alone next year. If we spent 5% extra on oil (global tax) we could fully fund global solar power within a year. Interestingly, to meet the US's entire current energy demands with solar electric, we would need to cover about half of our roads, at no net change in albumen.
Within 200 years, and probably within 50, all the energy used in the production of aluminum will be direct solar.
Bamboo vs. Aluminum just isn't that obvious
Bamboo is a very impressive material, basically a single orientation composite, which can be easily reinforced against torsion and it's comparatively low modulus can be compensated for with larger diameter tubes in a bicycle, but it is not obvious that it's a more efficient use of land to grow bamboo than to use solar power to recycle aluminum into new bicycles.
But we have a long way to go on energy use and recycling, and so bamboo is an o
Taxes pay into a pool from which the federal government provides services to the people of the united states; various programs benefit different groups, usefully divided by income, though other groupings are meaningful.
Government income is collected from the population at rates largely divided by personal income. Other groupings are meaningful, but for this argument, wealth is the most useful. There are many different taxes, some are "progressive," meaning the wealthier pay a higher percentage of their net income such as income tax, and "regressive" meaning the poor pay a higher percentage of their net income, such as sales taxes and gasoline taxes.
Everyone but the most lucky of the "lucky duckies" (as the wall street journal likes to call the destitute) pays taxes. Even those below poverty pay sales taxes and usage fees on subsidized infrastructure. To the poor, these regressive taxes represent a far higher percentage of their net income than the wealthy. The luckiest duckies of all are, of course, the homeless who scavenge food from dumpsters - they don't have to pay any taxes at all! And, of course, people like Leona "only the little people pay taxes" Helmsley...
In as much as Bush has lowered the top tax rates, is attempting to eliminate the "death tax" on estates worth more than $2M, reduced capital gains tax (the poor don't tend to have a lot of money in the market), etc. he has lowered the tax burden on the wealthy far more than he has for the poor, even as a percentage of pre-bush tax rates. That is he's flattening the overall tax rate. He is taking a tiny bit less tax money from the working poor, true, butt...
Part of the federal tax system was used to support state and local programs. The states and local municipalities use the federal monies to support services that most state residents consider essential: police, fire, emergency medical care, public education. Now that Bush's efforts have caused a reduction in available monies, the states and local municipalities have been forced to raise taxes to offset the lost income such that they can continue to put out fires, catch murderers, and replace the lamps in stop lights etc. State revenues are largely dependent on sales and use taxes. These are either flat taxes (sales) or constant taxes (usage, water, sewerage, etc. for the provision of services that all people use roughly equally regardless of income). As the burden of taxes is lifted from the shoulders of the rich, it falls on the poor. Sorry to disappoint, but "Voodoo economics" (Bush the Elder) doesn't work, as Reagan proved once, and Bush has proved again. Cutting taxes on the rich does not magically cause revenue to appear. The Laffer curve really was a joke, but only the rich get it. Taxes have been cut for the rich and the poor are paying the bills.
Now you state that those living in Poverty pay no taxes. I've made it clear, I believe, that you're simply mistaken about that, but lets clarify and say there is a minimum for which there is no federal income tax (not true for social security, which is a highly regressive tax, since there is a cap on the total amount paid, but still...). Only about 10% of the population lives in poverty, there's a majority between the top 25% and the bottom 10% that do pay taxes. The further down the tax scale you go, the less the benefit of the Bush tax cuts, the greater the burden of the consequent state and local tax hikes.
Take less from the rich, get it back from the poor.
But wait - that's still not all! That's just the income side. The government provides services, and these services can be divided by the wealth of the recipient, though less clearly than taxation.
The Bush administration has cut government services that tend to benefit the poor and protect the interests of future generations. To be brief (as possible) environmental laws protect the poor disproportionately since poor people are disproportionately located near pollution sources, are generally dependent on municipal
One convenient thing about this desperate onslaught against reason and the constitution by the copyright industry is that as the offense is repeated, so to may the attempt at defense.
I read with some dismay about the Author, Consumer and Computer Owner Protection and Security Act of 2003, or ACCOPS introduced by representatives Conyers and Berman. Please remind them at the next opportunity of the text of the 8th clause of the constitution:
"The Congress shall have the power.... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"
There is a critical point here, carefully obfuscated by the RIAA and it's minions - there is no such thing as "Intellectual Property."
There is a concept in law called a "Natural Right," and it is generally accepted that people have a natural right to propriety. But as Jefferson was explicitly clear on, there is no natural right to "own" an idea:
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea..."
Copyright does not protect property, it is not about protecting property; it is about promoting science and the useful arts. Copyright is not a property right; it is a temporary monopoly. Violating copyright is not theft, it is not piracy; it is guerilla anti-trust.
This distinction is quite clear in the constitutional grant of exclusive right, that such grant would not be obviously self-justified as it would be for property, but that such right is justified only in as much as it fulfills the noble social good of "promoting the progress of science and the useful arts."
Today fear of over-reaching laws wielded by greedy institutions has a broad chilling effect on innovation: science and the useful arts. ACCOPS further extends the damage done to innovation by such ill-conceived laws as the DMCA, CTEA and NET. Their only real purpose is to protect the profits of copyright holders by appropriating the public domain, and as much as they do so at the expense of innovation, they are unconstitutional. It is time to undo these egregious mistakes, not to extend them.
Thomas Jefferson was quite clear on his views of copyright and these views are enshrined in the 8th clause. It is a grant of an "embarrassing monopoly" and not a right; explicitly the fugitive fermentations of a mind cannot be owned.
Conyers and Berman need to hear and understand his words:
"It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, i
Actually it's a criminal offense if it falls under NET, CTEA, or DMCA. It used to be a civil offense if there was no quid pro quo exchange, and each civil violation would have made a person liable for some actual loss, though it wasn't something that was enforced.
But after the MIT BBS case, which had to be dropped because there was no quid pro quo, the law was changed to account for one to many, but it was written in such a way as to criminalize equally one to many (new) and one to one violations (which were just civil, and probably unprocecutable). Thanks to this, if you tape a TV show for your mom (or a single song, or even sing her "happy birthday" in public) you have committed a federal crime which carries more significant penalties than manslaughter in most states.
There is such a tremendous disconnect between what people think is right and fair and what the law states, that it should serve as a red flag for constitutional review. (Lessig's outcome indicates that this may be futile without a major shift in perception.)
What one should watch for is an attempt by the copyright industry to create an obfuscatory sea change in the perception of copyright, steering it entirely free of it's constitutional mandate. They have been fairly successful in getting people to refer to guerilla antitrust as "theft," and have harped ad nauseum their view that copying a song is tantamount to walking into a record store and stealing it.
But saying so doesn't make it so. They are so painfully, obviously, hilariously wrong, that most people don't even try to think about it and soon it will require a child (or Thomas Jefferson) to point out the obvious: if I walk into a record store and take a CD, the CD is gone. If I copy the a song, the original is still there, "as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."
A person may "own" a copyright, but that does not mean they "own" the information that is copyritten. You cannot own data, man. We, the People of the United States of America, to promote the progress of science and useful arts, grant for a limited time an "embarassing monopoly" to authors and inventors.
This is a critical distinction which has been carefully papered over by the entertainment industry and by their employees in congress: copyright is not and never was about protecting property or profit, it is a means to an end: the promotion of progress and science. It is constitutional only so much as it achieves that end. And it "may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody."
(Thomas Jefferson)
The history of tablet computing is littered with failure, and MS is joining the parade 10 years late (though, as a history lesson, MS crushed Go by promising pen-windows 3.1 and forcing vendors to dump Go to get seeded with pen windows, then after Go tanked, they pulled the plug).
...paper.
If you could get a touch/pen interface for trivial incremental cost and no resolution/weight/durability penalty, people would probably go for it. Maybe someday, but not yet.
Until then, as for Apple taking the niche: I worked on Scribe, the ATG's predecessor to the PenMac, a project so lost to history you can only find references to references on the web.
And the PenMac had, back in 95/96, many of the features of the new windows versions, including pressure sensitivity, a very accurate neural net based natural handwriting engine, etc. It even seemed quite a bit more responsive on that old 68020. It sold briefly in Japan for Kanji entry...
One problem with tablets... who writes anymore? Have you tried to write a letter recently? If you're less than 20, you probably never did. It's a compelling paradigm, but ultimately retro. Honestly, I can't anymore; my hand gets tired after a few paragraphs. Sure I could if I did it every day but I still wouldn't write this much with a pen. (Would the quality of writing improve if we took away all the keyboards?)
To be sure, there are niche markets. It's a solid interface extension to existing touchscreen applications like POS and machine control, and it's a nice for sketching.
But niche markets won't make for profitable software or affordable hardware. The problem is, in a nutshell, if you do it really well - get the tactile interaction just right, eliminate the display parallax, get the contrast up, get the pen as light and durable as a regular pen, even make the display flexible, make the whole thing weigh only a few hundred grams, and make it "instant-on," uncrashable, and with failsafe archival data retention and you've got....
Actually it started in 1953 when Eisenhower ordered the CIA to overthrow the popularly elected (as in a real democratic election) prime minister of Iran, Mossadegh, by pushing Reza Pahlava, the Shah, to expel him. Riots ensued, the Shah fled, the CIA put the riots down, brought the Shaw back, and trained SAVAK; who went on to earn Amnesty International's award for "worst human rights record on the planet" in 1976. That's the year Carter was elected, he didn't take office 'till 77. I'm not sure how you can imply he was responsible for the revolt in 79 to overthrow a brutal and repressive regime.
As for Reagan's illustrious involvement in the hostage crisis: He traded weapons to the Ayatollah Khomeini, the forces of darkness, to secure their release. Even Reagan admitted it. A very clever move, now known as the October Surprise, which was significant in defeating Carter.
"When President Reagan first issued his challenge to America's scientific community to find a defense against ballistic missiles..." Clinton did continue funding, but then Clinton governed as a moderate republican, unfortunately.
Greneda was no joke for the Grenadines. They had made the mistake of electing Maurice Bishop who, alas, was mildly socialist. CIA destabilization began shortly thereafter under Carter in '79, actually, but given the animosity and outright betrayal of Carter by the UberRight in the defense organization (Ollie et al, see above), it's not clear he knew anything about it. Given that Grenada was a managed news event, you should be careful of any "news" you read about it, and the dangerous weapons they had. Remember pfc Lynch's "Rescue."
US prohibition has quite a long history, all of it embarrassing. Reagan did declare the "War on Drugs," but what that really meant, and continues to mean is difficult to ascertain. One thing is for sure, it is not about helping people. Mentioning Gary Webb's careful and exceptionally well documented journalism runs contrary to the charade, but the evidence is strong that under Reagan the CIA was supporting the sale of cocaine in the US to fund the Contras after congress confronted the CIA's arms sales underwritten funding.
The difference is the Sandinistas were the popularly elected government and the Contras were the private army of Samoza, evacuated, rearmed, retrained, and reinserted