Yes, but in addition to converting 1TW to electricity, it is converting 3TW to heat.
Imagine the heat pipe properties of the material
conducting all that straight to the core. Actually, what you would expect would be for
the system to be isothermal.
In the vacuum of space (no conduction or convection losses), however, the only way to get rid of that much heat is to get very hot and radiate it. Fortunately, radiation increases with the fourth power of temperature and the back side of the array can be pointed into the cold of space (so there is no additional heat gain). In the absence of air, the temperature rise would be much higher. Back of the envelope calculation at 1KW/m^2 and emissivity of 1.0 into cold space is 364 degrees kelvin or 91 degrees celsius.
Power densities would be rather stagering near the satellite. 1TW of electricity flowing through a section of ribbon say 10 meters in diameter (the inner hub) and very thin. If the material was 1um thick, that would be a cross sectional area of 31*10^-6 or about equibalent to a 5.5mm square piece of material. If the solar cells are series connected to 1000V (creating insulating issues on the return connection), that still leaves 1 million amps flowing trough that cross section. A piece of copper wire that size would normally be rated (for terestial use) at about 130 amps. Of course being a thin sheet with lots of surface area helps. A PCB trace is a better analogy.
A copper pcb trace that size in air would be capable of carrying 2000A at 40 celsius degree temperature rise. Current density on the satelite is rougly three orders of magnitude higher.
This is where you want the superconducting and thermal pipe properties hinted at for the nanotube sheets.
Also, they were just talking about this material as the electrode for solar cells not as the energy converting material. You still need a semiconducting material (silicon or organic semiconductors).
Incidently, the flexible solar cells I have sitting on the bench next to me, which were originally intended for satellite use, measure about 4.5mils or 0.12mm thick.
The steerable 1TW maser, of course, is just asking to be the subject of the next james bond movie or a user friendly comic strip.
Instead of building 300Km^2 of solar cells and a maser, a simpler and more appropriate technology might be to simply focus the solar energy on a boiler farm on earth. Of course, we can do this on earth as well with solar towers with no need for space borne power stations. The nanotube material might be good for making light membrane mirrors that could stand up to wind. Incidently,
the arecibo observatory dish would get about 70MW
of solar radiation.
It's like this: even if you don't lock your door, you still have a right to be mad when you walk inside and find someone eating the cookies in your kitchen.
Another analogy would be whether or not there is a front door and whether it is capable of locking (not whether or not it is actually locked). If you did not install a front door,
it could be reasonable for people to assume they are entering a public area. On the other hand, if you have a locked front door, it is a private space no matter how insecure the lock. The case
of the missing front door isn't that uncommon, consider lobbies and enclosed front porches. With some businesses, there may be a door that is capable of locking but people enter without knocking assuming there is a public lobby on the other side. If you have an unlocked front door,
the meaning depends on context. In some areas, friends and neighbors assume they can enter without knocking or prior announcment but strangers should not. Porches frequently have a door that latches but has no keyhole. It is generally assumed that you may enter the porch to go knock on the front door behind it but that you may not do so for the purpose of walking off with the barbecue grill.
In the case of WiFi, it makes good sense for people to make their access points public for
the greater good but there are problems.
Open access points can be used for malevelent
behavior such as spamming, hacking, and piracy.
Also, ISPs that sell discounted connections on the
basis of use by a single household don't want you
sharing your access with your neighbors.
Some means of identification is needed. Unfortunately, this is usually currently handled by overpriced wifi roaming network accounts.
But consider the social contract of, I will open
my access point to you if you open yours to me so we both can get access away from home. Indeed,
I can see one form of "open" network where anyone can get an account provided they provide access
themselves. This eliminates two concerns of upstream ISPs: identification and you don't have mooches using the ISPs bandwidth via their neighbors without paying for access themselves.
The next level would not require you to have an open access point but would require you to have
a paid (typically landline) internet access.
There needs to be a general way to provide roaming authentication that provides for a traceable identity, notifies your upstream ISP that a third party is responsible for traffic rather than the
the subscriber, allows filtering of traffic if
a wireless account has been misused, prevents password capture, and allows optional blocking of those who do not already have internet access.
One approach would be to establish an encrypted IP tunnel to the "home" ISP. That way, the home ISP could handle authentication, logging, and filtering and any abusive packets would be seen as coming from the home ISPs netblock so complaints
would go to the appropriate party. One would
simply block all net access except from known
computers or traffic directed at a wireless tunnel port (say port 802). This has performance issues
as traffic must be carried further but requires less to implement. But it requires the cooperation only of those setting up the access point and the roamer's home ISP (or any machine they control as a gateway). If the ISP
upstream from the Access point wants to block,
it can block that one port. And it removes
the blame for any inappropriate activity from
the access point owner.
Mobile IP is similar but less secure.
In the longer term, a way of VLAN tagging foreign
traffic to your upstream ISP would be good. This
would provide better performance while letting ISPs filter and monitor traffic but requires
cooperation of your home and roaming ISPs, router vendors, DSL/cable modem vendors, etc.
Ultimately, any solution needs to be an internet standard with its own name/number so you can require that your ISP, client OS, and access point
comply with the standard. A standard would ideally in
Actually, while this formfactor is less useful tan a laptop in some applications it is more useful in others. Sometimes
the folding design of a traditional laptop gets in the way. Aside from the cost, this would be a
good replacement for i-Opener style projects.
A web pad like this is sort of a lapless laptop for couch potatoes. Looks like you could use it on
the couch or out on the deck (waterproof in case it
gets rained on). It would also be good in a bar
since it is apparently beer resistant. For bar use, I would want a shoulder strap (so you can take it with you when you go to the bathroom) and
a lock slot. If you want a real keyboard, you
plug in a USB keyboard and if it is destroyed by
a beverage the damage is limited. This would
make a nice ebook or IM widget. It would fit
on the kitchen counter or table (think 3M Audrey/I-Opener).
Mount it on the sunvisor of your car for a GPS navigation system. I already
did this with an iOpener.
It has some features that are significantly better than the iOpener: touchscreen (major advantage
in this case), instant on/off works, built in battery, built in keyboard/mouse, smaller vertical size obstructs view less, audio output jacks (for MP3/ogg player),
hard drive built in, and WiFi (so you can download gps coordinates, music, etc. from your home lan at the beginning of a trip or use as a browser/im/email/voip phone system near a hot spot). If I could afford to shell out $800 right now, I would
replace my iopener in a heartbeat. One feature
that would be useful in this application is the ability to automatically begin shutdown when the
ignition is turned off. With a USB DVD drive,
you could also play movies on this. Also,
this could be strapped to the back of a headrest
for use as an incar DVD player (with external drive). Unfortunately, I think in this case
"client" means the same as "host" rather than
"slave" (or "device" in USB spec parlance).
Some suggestions for future models:
Given the size, I would have prefered a built in
DVD+/-R drive. It would make a nice DVD player.
Video input like the archos PMA400 and TV tuner (with ATSC as well as NTSC support (add PAL/SECAM and DVB for european markets)
An optional mounting widget for a small USB or bluetooth keyboard that makes it hinge like a laptop.
More mouse buttons so you can run real software.
More SDIO slots would be nice and maybe a compact
flash slot too (there are still things like
cell phone modems that aren't availible in the
smaller SDIO form factor).
Think about making an alternative "case" that
is basically a flat plate behind which the screen
mounts for build in applications (security system, climate controls, industrial controller, kiosk, etc). An internal expansion bus for connecting
I/O devices would be helpfull here.
More USB ports so you don't need a hub.
Built in 110V/12V power supply so all you need is an HP cord or cigarette lighter cord at each
place of frequent use.
Silicone Rubber sleave (think Fluke 77 mulitmeter) to give more protection if dropped. They also make a super clear transparent silicone that could even be used to protect the screen (might affect touch screen operation).
An optional expansion unit could dock to the back to provide extra features like DVD+/-RW, more battery, ethernet, built in power supply, etc.
Shoulder strap and protective carrying case or
at least screen cover.
Attachment points for various mounting options
(starting with VESA display mount). Allows
vehicle mounting (visor, dash, or behind seat), under cabinet mount, CRT arm style mount over desk or table, MIDI keyboard mount, kiosk mount, etc. Optional removable adapter so unit can be unmounted quickly for portable use. Removable
adapter could also incorporate docking connector.
A smaller version with DVD drive behind and where the keyboard/mouse/speak
I once reduced the effect of an accident by speeding. Another driver on the interstate suffered from indecision when he found himself in a turn lane he didn't want to be in and ended up hitting the end of a barrier head on and spinning off it to strike my vehicle. Although I actually felt his vehicle strike the rear corner of mine, there was zero damage because I was able to speed up enough
to reduce the force of impact to within elastic limits. On the other hand, if I had not done so
the consequences could have been worse than some crumpled metal. It could have led to loss of control of my vehicle which was in a traffic lane
which could have caused my vehicle to strike other vehicles and precipitated a major accident.
At the very least, a system like this needs to be designed to prevent systematic speeding but allow an overspeed budget for emergency manuevers. However, that still might not be sufficient to deal with trips to the hospital, emergency situations in bad neighborhoods, and pursuit by someone intent on killing you (such as being stalked by an abusive spouse in retaliation for leaving). There are also situations like tornadoes, hurricanes, or the (often exagerated) threat of WMD use.
There are a variety of GPS errors that could affect speed calculations. In some cases, these
could cause your vehicle to slow to well below the speed limit. But by the rule of unintended consequences they could also cause the vehicle to exceed the speed limit. Drivers of vehicles with such devices (without an overspeed budget) will discover a new form of cruise control. Put the pedal to the metal and let
the electronics keep track of the speed limits; if the error is in your favor, you get to go too fast. Hopefully the driver will react before striking another vehicle. If drivers got used to driving this way, they might also get lazy and let the car determine the safe speed instead of their own judgement in rainy conditions.
As the parent suggests, the GPS system (unless all vehicles are so equipped) will also choose a speed that can differ significantly from the consensus of other drivers on the same road; the resulting differentials can be more dangerous than speeding.
Also, if you are driving a long distance and likely to get tired, it can be safer to speed while you are still alert so you can slow down when your alertness drops, thus maximizing the
alertness per mile traveled ratio.
I doubt the US is spending even close to that on alternative energy research. Not to diminish the problems of those with erectile dysfunction but a cure for cancer or free energy would probably do a lot more people a lot more good for the money.
Actually, I think you are diminishing the problems
of those with ED. And engaging in the common fallacy that no enterprise is worth undertaking if there is a better undertaking. If we were actually to focus 100% of our efforts on the key problems chances are we would shoot ourselves in the foot because innovation in those areas will
ulitimately depend on innovation in others and because scientific discoveries often occur when
you are looking for something else.
There are about 3 billion men in the world with a life expectancy of around 70 years. As a rough rule of thumb, the probability of erectile disfunction is a mans age with a percent sign
tacked on the end. So, about 2.1 billion people
will suffer from ED. Not to mention their partners. So, $16billion in research is about $8
per person who would be helped. Not even counting future generations. Global income is around $5500 per person. That means that $8 represents about 0.004% of a mans lifetime income but it makes a substantial difference in quality of life. However, existing treatments are less than 100% effective and cost more than $8 per DOSE not per lifetime.
Why divert money from one benificial activity to another when you could be diverting money from a detrimental activity?
It is much more productive to make the comparison
between spending money on alternative energy and
the cost of the war on Iraq. We have spent
$180 billion on the war so far. Not to mention
the human cost. If you spent that money on
Negawatts, thermal depolymerization and other
biomass projects, hybrid cars, etc. we would
go a long way to eliminating our dependency
on middle eastern oil and reduce greenhouse emissions considerably.
Negawatts includes replacing all incandescent lightbulbs with compact flourescent, installing decent reflectors in all light fixtures, and installing more efficient motors. Just the lighting improvements are enough to make the US go from a net energy importer to a net energy export.
And, we would actually get all the money spent
back many times over in future cost savings.
One of the fundamental flaws in GPL is that it focuses on punishing bad behavior rather than enabling good behavior. Yes, the GPL prevents
some companies from using open source software and not giving anything back. But it also interferes
with more altruistic companies that would like to give something back.
To make money, you typically have to strike a balance between giving things away and holding
something back. Free samples, trial downloads,
corporate philanthropy, and free consultations, are a few examples of how giving something away is present in almost every line of business. But very few businesses can survive without holding something back. A mexican restaurant may give free chips and salsa, but they can't give away
all the meals. With software, there is more potential to give stuff away because the marginal
cost is zero, unlike food, but somehow one still
needs to pay for the initial cost of development.
If you can lower the initial cost incorporating free software, then it becomes economical to
charge less for the software or give more away.
A lot of businesses do err on
the side of holding too much back and it ultimately hurts consumers and often the companies
themselves. I would like to see them do better
but using GPL to force that causes too much collateral damage. It actually helps the big greedy corporations by hurting the small inovative ones.
GPL holds something back too. Something that
can make incorporating free software too expensive - the right to earn a living. And don't think
we can survive without businesses, either. Open source will hopefully replace commercial software for a lot of the more common stuff but there is a lot of more specialized software that someone will still need to pay for.
GPL advocates focus on trying to coerce big greedy corporations but hurts small socially conscious businesses. The large corporations can afford
to rewrite everything they need and let their cusomters foot the bill. Yes, some of them may make some token efforts at giving away
open source code where it does not hurt their business models. In most cases, this is
because they are selling hardware and can afford
to give away some software. A few companies can
make money packaging distributions (and, oddly, they donate surprisingly little in the way of
useful code back to the community).
More effort should be put into making consumers socially conscious. If consumers make ethical buying decisions, the companies have to follow.
Besides educating consumers, they have to be given real choices. Hurting honest companies does
not help in that regard.
I am also much more concerned about whether companies provide source code to their products
than whether they give them away for free.
Consider GPS mapping software. There is an
open source package out there (roadmap) that
has essentially stagnated. And it needs a lot
of work. If it was BSD licensed, I would have been tempted
to do a lot of work on it and get companies like
taxi cab companies, utility companies, pizza delivery, and the trucking industry to put food on my table while I worked on it. But I certainly can't afford to do the months of work the program
needs without some way to produce income.
All the new features and bugfixes that weren't related to dispatching commercial vehicles could be given back to the community immediately
and the commercial features more gradually. Everyone would have benefitted. Users would not have had to wait five minutes while the program
tries to draw a street level map of the entire country. Users would be able to enter an address and actually have it match (currently, most matches fail because the map database has the subdivision names instead of city names).
Ham radio operators would be able to use it for
APRS. And there would be features that are required for support vehicles for events like the MS150 bike tour.
Maybe there wouldn't have been as much benefit as if someone who could afford to do so
put extensive work into
I keep hearing people talk about how they want a music player with an FM "tuner", as if calling it a "tuner" will somehow make it more special or techno-sounding than it really is...a crappy FM "radio".
The people you are criticising aren't being pretentious, they are just far more knowledgable in this area than you are.
Tuner is not being used as a euphemism for a radio.
The tuner module is a component of a radio (or TV), the major components being the power supply, user interface (which in the old days often involved strings and pulleys), tuner, and the amplifier.
For many years, in quality stereos, the tuner was often a seperate box but even a cheap shit $10 radio had a tuner though it may not have been explicitly called that if it wasn't a separate standardized module. It wasn't always called a tuner. A portable audio player already has an audio amplifier, power supply, and a user interface so it just needs the tuner part. Even more importantly, if you ask for a radio you might get it; some idiot will design a unit with a radio in the same box and a switch to select output the headphones connect to.
Or at least you will get a device that adds radio functionality but nothing else. In a decent product, the tuner would be able to feed the audio output mixer directly or feed into the ADC so that
you can record radio shows. In a spiffier product, you would be able to do the same with TV broadcasts/cable.
When combined with a digital product, a "tuner" is typically a little metal box containing the RF components from the noise generating digital components. Also consider that many devices such
as TVs, VCRs, DVD recorders, and PVRs contain "tuners", in some cases (such as picture-in-picture TVs) more than one.
Anyone notice how this happened right after they found that guy in California with names of 36,000 (not a typo) boys in notebooks?
Apparently journalists aren't very good at math.
The man was 63 years old. If he started at 12
years old, that is 41 years. Subtract the 12 years
he was in jail and you get 29 years, that is 1241 incidents a year or 3.4 incidents per day.
Yes, the guy appears to have really molested kids
and been arrested about 9 times. But 36000?
It is physically possible but doing it without being arreseted more often than he was is another matter. That is 4000 incidents per arrest.
Even Michael Jackson couldn't do that and he built an amusement park for kids.
Even if his journals are real, they probably record more fantasies than reality. Or someone
planted fake notebooks on a random repeat offender so they could pass repressive laws. This happened just three days after Jackson (who was distracting the media from news about important stories like the
Downing Street Memo
) was acquited.
You forgot about another set of problems: vote-buying & extortion.
It is much easier and more effective to commit election fraud via tampering with the counting process. It was, however, specifically with
an eye towards goon squads that I specifically
stipulated that individual voters could chose to discard their receipt before leaving the polling place. If you are concerned, about these things, however, there was a system with graphically encrypted receipts discussed here a while back.
Condorcet methods have their advantages, but they're somewhat vulnerable to strategic voting, and almost no one understands them. If you want a different system, use approval voting -- it's better, and much easier for Joe Voter to understand.
I don't think approval voting is as good as condorcet though it is better than the current system. All usable systems are somewhat vulnerable to strategic voting but almost any
system is less vulnerable than our current system which basically demands strategic voting.
Some have argued that approval voting is less
vulnerable to strategic voting than condorcet but it isn't very convincing. Indeed, I can easily see both democrats and republicans not checking the box for a moderate third candidate (who otherwise would win outright) in order
to bury them. Approval voting as it would likely be implemented on old voting equipment would be extremely vulnerable to tampering. You can get around this by requiring an explicit yes or no rather than selecting but ranking systems prevent the incorrect use of old equipment.
Ranking candidates, which is what the general public needs to understand, is not hard to understand. The tabulating methods are confusing but anyone who wants to understand those can find documents that explain how and why particular systems are used.
electionmethods.org
and wikipedia have more info for those who want to
find out more.
Actually, letting the voter take a copy of the paper with them, and verify it later, is an ESSENTIAL safegaurd against fraud at all stages of the process. When you have verified your identity, you should be given a token with a unique serial number chosen randomly from a drum of such tokens. This token is used to activate the voting machine and the serial number is recorded on all 4 paper copies of the vote:
Receipt printer 1, roll copy. Official tally.
Receipt printer 1, tear off copy. Voter copy. Voter uses this copy to check their vote
online after election or, if they prefer not to be caught with it on their person, they toss it in the trash or give it to an election watchdog who will check for them.
Receipt printer 2, roll copy. Backup copy.
Additional safegaurd against printing problems.
Receipt printer 2, tear off copy.
Voter drops this copy in the box maintained
by the watchdog organisation of their choice when the leave the polling area. Watchdog
organization checks votes against those distributed online.
Electronic copies. These can be broadcast over a one way RS-232 or ethernet
connection to any organization making an electronic copy in batches of 100 (to protect
privacy by hiding the time).
The serial number of the token/vote is NOT recorded during the registration checking
process. Neither is the time. Once they have the tokens, voters are allowed to go to any voting machine in any order and are allowed to wait until there are other voters present to protect against
time stamps.
There is a locking clear cover over the roll receipt that allows a person to see the roll copies as well as the tear off copies. The voter
checks that all 4 copies match their vote before leaving the booth. Once they tell the voting machine this is the case, the machine does a form feed which hides the vote from view.
Votes are not merely counted, they are listed.
All unused tokens are also listed on a separate list.
Thus, for each candidate in the presidential race,
there is a list of millions of serial numbers. These are checked by any individual or organization that wishes to do so for:
No serial numbers that don't fall in the range of numbers actually allocated to some precinct and actually used
No serial numbers that also appear on the unused token list or are duplicated on another candidates list
The number of serial numbers matches the official total.
The number of serial numbers for each precinct match the
official counts for that precinct.
No serial numbers on the void list appear
on any candidates list.
The total number of serial numbers appearing
in any candidates list from a given preceinct exactly matches the number of people who voted in that precinct. (It is not allowed to leave a vote blank, you must either vote for a specific candidate or "no preference" in each race before the machine will accept and print your vote).
Keeping the receipts on rolls is not as anonymous as dropping separated receipts in a box, so safegaurds are suggested above to avoid time/order based privacy attacks. But using rolls protects against voter error in not putting the main copy of the ballot in a box (which leads to discrepencies), it protects against individual ballots being discarded if the person handling the ballots doesn't like the votes cast, and it allows
for easier automatic counting using a roll fed scanner. Indeed, recounts can be done while
the election is still proceeding. As each roll is taken out of the voting machines, it can be fed through a device with two reels and a large gap in between and a feed roller. Each monitoring organization (including watchdog groups and each political party) can put a scanner head connected t
You need a simple hand-held reader from a 3rd party to verify the accuracy of the 2D codes, or a government built one.
There is a simple way to avoid the problem of the
2D bar codes not matching the human readable version. Make the human readable version and
the machine readable version the same copy by printing a mark sense style ballot. Checks can
be built in (the machine can look at empty boxes as well as filled in ones) so that the machine can't print misaligned registration marks to produce an off by one error and OCR (more reliable in this situation than most because the vocabulary is very limited) can be used to insure that the candidate names have not been reordered.
In my opinion - I just don't see why we cannot create a simple system to allow you to enter your government peronal ID number (Social Security in US, Social Insurance Number in Canada) and a password to allow you the ability to vote online.
Botnets
or viruses
could easily change your vote after you entered
your SSN and password.
Well, my point is that it's possible for cars now. Cars have different acceleration needs than a diesel locomotive, y'know?
Actually, the traction portion of a modern electric bus is designed similarly to a diesel-electric locomotive and can blow the doors off of a beamer. Oddly, blowing the doors off of a beamer is a safety consideration. Because if you don't, the idiot in the beamer trys to cut off the bus and causes an accident. Which doesn't hurt the bus but makes you late on your route. What slows the Diesel-electric locomotive down is pulling 200 cars loaded with coal. Series DC electric motors have extremely high torque at low speeds and can be coupled to the wheel through a fixed gear ratio (if any) and go from starting to highway speeds.
Unfortunately, commercial hybrid cars don't use series hybrid designs like locomotives and don't
have a motor on each wheel. Instead, they try
to shave motor costs by running a parallel hybrid configuration (boost/buck like an APC UPS).
The technology has been here for years. Car companies just aren't using it, probably for cost reasons.
It is NOT in the best interest of the lender to loan more than can be repaid with a foreclosure of the property.
Exactly. Which is why if the difference between the sellers asking price (based on sellers appraisal) or the negotiated price and the bank's appraisal is significantly less than the downpayment, the bank will lend the money. So, if the price of the house is $150K and the buyer puts up a $30K downpayment and the bank's appraiser says the house is worth $140K, the bank will approve the loan. If there is a foreclosure, the buyer, not the bank, is out the difference. If the discrepancy is significant, it is the buyer that may nix the sale, though by that time they may be too emotionally invested in the house and have spent too much time on it to back out.
Further, if the bank's appraiser says the above mentioned house is worth $150K, it may not come back to haunt the appraiser unless there is no downpayment. If there are a lot of cases where
there is a discrepancy, the bank might get wary even though it hasn't lost any money but the time
the initial sale is made and the time of foreclosure are separated in time so the appraiser can try to blame the difference on changes in market conditions or deterioration of the house.
Also, in the several years that have passed between the sale and the foreclosure, appreciation will have boosted the price of the house so the bank actually can sell it for the previously inflated appraised value.
I think I see the problem. Unfortunately, "gentrification" is a fact of life. If a buyer is willing to pay more than you for a property and an owner is willing to sell it, why is this the fault of the agent or appraiser?
If the value of only one house is inflated, buyers will be reluctant to buy that property. But when the inflated prices become wide spread, the buyers only alternative may be not to buy any house.
You decide to sell your car and you place an ad in the newspaper.
They each offer you a different amount. Which offer will you take? The highest, middle, or lowest? Be honest!
There are many cases where honest people may choose a fair price rather than the "best" price.
I have sold things for less than the maximum I could get for them and I have bought things for
more than the asking price if they were substantially undervalued. Yes, if I go to a thrift store and find something that was underpriced but many other things were overpriced, I may not offer them a higher price. And I might not offer someone a fair price on an undervalued item if I don't think they would ever extend me the same courtesy.
My last two cars were sold for $0. In the first case, the neighbor who I gave it to offered money but he had been helpful in the past. In the second case, I was under time pressure and offered the car to a poor couple.
WTF? What does this have to do with property values?
I was pointing out that this kind of pressure affects people in many professions. People are often pressured to behave unethically and rather than fight the pressure or admit to themselves they are compromising their ethics, they rely on rationalization and denial to keep their egos intact.
As for my mom's mortgage, the point was that she did get a better deal than she thought she did, or at least due to outside circumstances (runaway appreciation) she was better off with a deal that seemed unfair at the time than she would have been if the house had been liquidated and she had to buy or rent another house. But people of her generation have a lot of difficulty understanding the economic problems facing people in the following generations.
As for your rent problem, it would appear to me that you need to be a property owner rather than a renter.
That is not a viable option. In fact, I know of few single people who make an honest living who are able to do that on their own. Usually, it requires at least two people and/or help from the families. A
This could be useful for breaking the cycle that prevents adoption of IPv6. ISPs don't provide
service because there isn't enough user demand. Users don't demand it in part because a lot of software would break. And software developers
don't provide IPv6 support because their ISP doesn't support IPv6. Yes, you can configure
tunneling software but if you are behind a NATing and Firewalling router, there are likely to be some problems and by the time you are done configuring it, you don't have time to work on the software; this project actually replaces
a commonly used router with one that enables IPv6 rather than getting in the way. And likewise, most people can't really switch to IPv6 only until almost everyone supports IPv6. So, this could help provide critical mass.
The web page is pretty vague about what is actually going on under the hood. Presumably this distribution creates a tunnel to some IPv6
relay router but what gateway or tunneling protocol is used is not specified.
Bzzzzt. Sorry, but you are incorrect. Real estate agents are NOT appraisers. The training is different and the licensing is different. No lender in their right mind would ever consider using an appraisal from an agent or broker and put their money at risk.
I did not say real estate agents are appraisers. I said appraisers are real estate agents. While that might not be true in some cases, I suspect it is in most. I.E. A person typically starts as a real estate agent and then gets certified as an appraiser. I think they can even be a real estate agent and an appraiser simultaneously, though in many places they might be prevented from serving both roles on the same property. IIRC, one of the houses I lived in actually was actually appraised by the selling agent (who was also an appraiser).
Even if the apraiser is not and has never been a real estate agent, I think appraisers are usually
hired by either the selling agent or in some cases by the city tax assessors office. In some cases the buyer or the bank may hire an appraiser for a second appraisal but I suspect the banks usually will take an "independent" appraiser hired by the seller at their word. Money tends to corrupt even when people are trying to be honest.
If you are an appraiser try the following experiment, either in reality or in your head.
Divide your selling broker clients randomly into two groups with about equal business from each. For the first group, highball every estimate by $2500 and for the second group lowball every estimate by $2500. At the end of one year,
are you still getting the same amount of business from each group? Not likely. Consciously or subconsciously, they are going to favor the appraiser who gives them the results they like.
Now if your price is way to high and the houses don't sell, then it will bite you in the ass.
Appraisals are often done on the basis of comparable houses. So, if a few appraisals in the neighborhood were high and the others were accurate, this tends to raise
the future appraisals on all the houses in the neighborhood.
This is basically a passive conspiracy, which is much more common than an active conspiracy. Nobody may get together and explicitly agree to
behave in a certain way but the collective self interest of a group of people (often at odds with the interests of society) can cause them to behave collectively. Sometimes it is pretty subtle.
Sometimes individuals are consciously trying to pursue particular results other times it is
more subtle. Advertisers affect media. Sometimes they are blatant about it (pulling or threatening to pull advertisments in response to a story). In other cases, the advertisers may simply complain to editors that the story could have been written better when it doesn't come out in their favor and of course they don't complain
if it does. Reporters learn to think twice before saying anything that would adversely affect an advertiser and they don't think twice if it wouldn't.
Funders affect the outcome of scientific studies. While scientists as a whole are more honest than most other professions, the standard of proof for reaching a conclusion that might offend the funding organization is going to be higher than for conclusions that are neutral or come out in their favor. Less honest scientists will more deliberately skew results in favor of the funder
and consequently will get more grants than the honest ones. Eventually, the more honest ones will become envious of their peers or strapped for grant money. Consultants who prepare results
that say what the client wants to hear get more repeat business than those that don't. Intellegence analysts who say there are WMDs in Iraq get promoted, those that say there aren't get passed over (actually, in that case there reportedly were explicit instructions to find intelligence that justified the war rather than provide accurate intelligence). General Eric Shinseki was forced to retire because he accurately predicted that the war in Iraq would requir
American Cell Phone Company buys cell phone part pre-assembled from China for $20 and battery from Korea for $10, then does final assembly here and charges $61 wholesale to the gov't.
Actually, you are pretty close although you are looking at cell phone prices after rebates. More likely scenario: Halliburton buys a cell phone for $200 from nokia, sanyo, erickson, etc. Then they add a US manufactured Halliburton label and charge the govenment $500. Now it is 60% US made
on a value added basis. Or maybe they add one of those totally ineffective US made battery booster labels.
If they want to be a little less blatent, they pay to have a custom
plastic case with a metal ALISA clip (instead of the plastic clips that break once a month) molded and claim the higher cost is due to the phone being military/law enforcement spec and customized. Or they pay a machine shop to machine the case out of magnesium and charge
the government $1000. Or, perhaps they need
shoe phones
in the fight against shoe bombers.
Also, while it is very difficult to make a device that has 50% of semiconductors made in the US (even though there are 133 semiconductor fabs in the US), you can still can get bare circuit boards made in the US and have assembly done in the US. It will cost more but driving up the US cost significatly while slightly lowering the foreign cost helps you satisfy the US requirement.
It is even getting harder to know where chips are manufactured. None of the semiconductors on the last two boards I designed are labeled as to their country of origin, due to the small size of the surface mount parts.
One thing that does make it more feasabile to use 50% US made components is the fact that those parts which are made in the US are the more expensive parts. $0.14 logic gate chips are made outside the US but many high end CPUs, Memory, and possibly FPGAs are made in the US.
Embedded CPUs are probably mostly foreign made but if you slap a Pentium 4 in your cell phone (and a car battery to power it) you could meet the US made critera. Or add an FPGA based encryption chip to the phone.
Almost all of these more complicated approaches actually would boost the local economy so they will probably go with the $300 Halliburton label since in contributes nothing to the actual economy but lines the pockets of corrupt corporations and goverment employees.
I agree on your point on senseless real estate appreciation and have been making similar comments myself for years. Houses do not appreciate, they depreciate; the damn things fall apart. The land may, however, may appreciate in value if it is in a popular area (i.e. a city). I always thought that real estate appreciation was a scam concocted by
real estate agents to offset their commissions.
If every time you sold your house it sold for the same price that you bought it for, you would be out $10,000 in commissions. This would make you
seriously look at why you are paying $10,000 for a (usually incompetent) agent. Fortunately, appraisals are done by real estate agents; often not the agent selling the house but a buddy. So, you jack up the appraisal of the house by at least the amount of the commissions so you don't pay too much attention to why you are paying five times as much for a real estate bimbo to sell your house as you would a surgeon for life saving surgery (the hospital will make up the difference, though).
Did the seller do any remodelling or redecorating? Add the cost of that (plus some) to the appraisal as well. Never mind that they buyer will probably have to spend more money undoing the "improvements".
These real estate idiots are way behind on using technology and actual information to sell houses.
A few now offer panoramic camera views. A large number of people who buy houses do so in a different city than the one they now live in and those that live in the same city have better things to do with their time than shlep around to houses that could have been ruled out with a real estate bimbo who insists on showing houses during customers working hours. Hire some architecture students to draw up a decent floorplan/3D model of the house, take pictures that are linked so you can select any view of each room from the floorplan, and photograph, catalog, and test all ethernet, phone, cable tv, and electrical outlets including which circuit breaker they connect to.
Real estate agent incompetence and the constant stream of disinterested potential buyers traipsing through also severely impacts the lives of people who live in rental property which is being sold to a new landlord. Give people decent virtual tours at their convenience and then let them visit the house only if it is really one of their top candidates.
Besides making real estate agents among the
top ten overpaid professions
in America, housing is not affordable to those entering the housing market. When the baby boomers, who bought their first houses for realistic prices before appreciation ran amok under favorable loan terms, die off the bubble will have to burst.
I dont know if you are legally responsible, but do you want to help the anonomous distribution of child pornography, especially if the children are actually being harmed?
Well, given that it can be difficult to transmit money anonymously, why not? If the distribution is not providing incentive for people to create new pornography and in the process victimize children I don't have a big problem with it.
I would rather see old child porn and synthetic child porn distributed than create a market for new child porn. Attempts at censorship are likely to create a financial incentive.
Fantasies have no morality. It is actions that have morality. By analogy, it is ok (and probably quite common) to fantasize about killing your boss but acting on those fantasies is not ok.
Often repeated claims that pornography causes people to victimize others are not supported by the facts. People have a very broad range of sexual fantasies and for almost all of them there are ethical ways to act out or sublimate those desires. Trying to supress those desires
instead of accepting them is more likely to result in behavior that is harmful to others. Repression is linked to sex crimes.
Turned on primarily by children? Find an adult who is into age play.
Most child sexual abuse is not perpetrated by people primarily attracted to children but is situational expediency. Interestingly, those who are fixated on children tend to see themselves as children and are seeking what they perceive as other children rather than an adult-child power dynamic.
Protecting the children is an argument often used to infringe on the rights of adults.
Paypal is used to give some level of anonymity in financial transactions but the US government would have no trouble obtaining paypal records.
Yes, people could transmit money by swiss bank accounts but the US government now has access to swiss bank accounts.
Systems like Tor have limited capacity that limits how much spammer's can send. So SPAM may hurt tor much more than tor helps spammers. Also, spamers produce large amounts of traffic that can be detected and blocked at the point where it enters the tor network.
As for the terrorism argument, one must first put terrorism in perspective. Even in 2001, the year of the 9/11 and anthrax attacks, you were about ten times more likely to die of suicide than of a terrorist attack. In 2001, terrorism accounted for about 0.1% of all deaths in the US. Or your chances of dying from terrorism that year were around 0.001%. More Americans died of Asthma in 2001 than terrorism. Likewise for malnutrition, ulcers, medical mistakes, and drowning.
Protecting against terrorism has been used as an argument to undermine constitutional freedoms.
Far more people have been killed by their own governments than by terrorism. In the last century worldwide, genocide has probably killed around 1% of the population and that does not count governments killing political opponents.
One of the factors that helped Zero Knowledge become defunct was their funding from the CIA. Can you say "conflict of interest"?
Perhaps you have confused Zero Knowledges Freedom Network with SafeWeb. Articles about the closure of the partially CIA funded Safeweb also mentioned the recent closure of Freedom Network. Similarly,
slashdot discussions
of Freedom Network 's closure also discussed safeweb's CIA connections.
Algae has one advantage over regular plants - it probably doesn't care about gravity so there is no need to spin a section of the station to make artificial gravity and then try to reflect sunlight in. Ordinary plants try to grow "upwards", for the most part. The weight issue might be with the water the algae grows in more than the algae itself.
Algaes efficency may be per photon rather than per pound.
People don't like nuclear power because of incidents like three mile island and Chernobly,yet more damage is done each year by the cumulitive effects of coal/gas and oil plants.
I read somewhere that more people die in coal mines in russia every year than the total death toll (including long term cancer deaths) from chernobyl. And chernobyl was a crappy design that would not be allowed in the US. Cancer death estimates vary considerably, however.
Additional eurasian cancer deaths would have to be compared to polution related deaths from power plants (which kills thousands every year).
Directly attributable deaths
for nuclear power, per terawatt years of power generated are 8 for nuclear power, 85 for natural gas, 342 for coal, and 883 for hydroelectric (dam's break). Add some cancer deaths for nuclear and pollution related deaths from fossil fuels. And add global warming related deaths to fossil fuels.
Commercial power plants have 11000 reactor years of operation in over 30 countries with two major accidents. That is
about one accident per 100 power plants over the
projected life of the reactor and future accidents are likely to resemble three mile island rather than chernobyl. And coal plants release more radiation into the atmosphere than nuclear plants (yep, coal contains radioactive material).
Average radiation exposure
to 2 million people around three mile island was 1mrem compared to
6mrem for a set of chest xrays. Exposure at the plant boundary was 100mrem which is less than the
annual background exposure. So, even if you were standing near the plant, your total lifetime radiation exposure was increased by about 1.2%.
Studies indicate that US Nuclear reactors will survive a direct hit from a 767.
Nuclear waste disposal is an issue.
Integral Fast Reactors
have the potential to reduce the magnitude of this problem considerably.
There is one new technology that is more suited for oil replacement and could be a decent alternative to nuclear as a fossil fuel replacement:
Thermal Depolymerization
.
That is a new technology but a pilot plant is producing 400 barrels of oil per day. When run off of plant (or even animal) material, the net greenhouse emissions are zero and the process consumes waste (and a wider variety of waste than other technologies) rather than creating it.
I live about 30 miles from two nuclear power plants (and the site of what might be the first new power plant built in the US) and less than half a mile from a research reactor.
The obsession with low prices in this country creates a
Tragedy of the Commons
situation. We save money buying at walmart but in doing so, jobs move overseas and the jobs which stay here become less lucrative. Each individual saves some money by buying at walmart and that individuals own choice to buy at walmart (or buy cheap products in general) or not ultimately doesn't make much difference in whether their job gets offshored or not but collectively
the behavior cuts jobs. As long as your neighbors buy the cheap stuff, your job still goes overseas. This is quite different from Henry Fords original goal to pay his workers enough money that they could afford to buy his cars.
Every man for himself leaves us all vulnerable, unless we own a multinational corporation.
And as more people are unemployed or less gainfully employed we have less money to buy things so we have to buy cheap creating a vicious circle.
While the US economy appears to be growing, all this free market out of control and globalization
the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The article
In Praise of Prosperity
points out that while GDP has gone up the real incomes of 90% of the population went down. It also points out that 7 out of 10 of the highest GDP per capita nations are social democracies. And that America's GDP went up only because we are working 25% more hours while other countries like France can sustain the same GDP growth while reducing the hours worked by 25%. So, if we both started at 40 hours a week, we are working 50 hours when the french are down to 30.
As the situation for Americans continues to deteriorate, we become ripe targets for
palingenetic ultranationalist populism.
And to distract people from the real problems they will redirect peoples discontent towards immigrants, sexual minorities, and other marginal groups. But there is nothing to worry about until you see campaigns to make it impossible for illegal aliens to get drivers licenses, vigilantes patrolling the border, or denying civil rights and jobs to homosexuals.
Oh... wait.
The "Reluctant Bush Responder in Mixed Political Company" hypothesis is also discredited in that report. The hypothesis that kerry supporters would seek out exit polsters is not consistent with the differences in response rates in bush vs kerry districts. And if the discrepency was due to exit poll respondants lying about who they voted for, there would have to be more republican liars than democrats and you would expect to see the effect in the senate race results but that was not the case.
So, you have one report that says exit poll response rates were skewed in favor of kerry but offers nothing to substantiate that claim and you
have another report that says this is not true and backs that claim up.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but in addition to converting 1TW to electricity, it is converting 3TW to heat. Imagine the heat pipe properties of the material conducting all that straight to the core. Actually, what you would expect would be for the system to be isothermal. In the vacuum of space (no conduction or convection losses), however, the only way to get rid of that much heat is to get very hot and radiate it. Fortunately, radiation increases with the fourth power of temperature and the back side of the array can be pointed into the cold of space (so there is no additional heat gain). In the absence of air, the temperature rise would be much higher. Back of the envelope calculation at 1KW/m^2 and emissivity of 1.0 into cold space is 364 degrees kelvin or 91 degrees celsius.
Power densities would be rather stagering near the satellite. 1TW of electricity flowing through a section of ribbon say 10 meters in diameter (the inner hub) and very thin. If the material was 1um thick, that would be a cross sectional area of 31*10^-6 or about equibalent to a 5.5mm square piece of material. If the solar cells are series connected to 1000V (creating insulating issues on the return connection), that still leaves 1 million amps flowing trough that cross section. A piece of copper wire that size would normally be rated (for terestial use) at about 130 amps. Of course being a thin sheet with lots of surface area helps. A PCB trace is a better analogy. A copper pcb trace that size in air would be capable of carrying 2000A at 40 celsius degree temperature rise. Current density on the satelite is rougly three orders of magnitude higher. This is where you want the superconducting and thermal pipe properties hinted at for the nanotube sheets.
Also, they were just talking about this material as the electrode for solar cells not as the energy converting material. You still need a semiconducting material (silicon or organic semiconductors).
Incidently, the flexible solar cells I have sitting on the bench next to me, which were originally intended for satellite use, measure about 4.5mils or 0.12mm thick.
The steerable 1TW maser, of course, is just asking to be the subject of the next james bond movie or a user friendly comic strip.
Instead of building 300Km^2 of solar cells and a maser, a simpler and more appropriate technology might be to simply focus the solar energy on a boiler farm on earth. Of course, we can do this on earth as well with solar towers with no need for space borne power stations. The nanotube material might be good for making light membrane mirrors that could stand up to wind. Incidently, the arecibo observatory dish would get about 70MW of solar radiation.
It's like this: even if you don't lock your door, you still have a right to be mad when you walk inside and find someone eating the cookies in your kitchen.
Another analogy would be whether or not there is a front door and whether it is capable of locking (not whether or not it is actually locked). If you did not install a front door, it could be reasonable for people to assume they are entering a public area. On the other hand, if you have a locked front door, it is a private space no matter how insecure the lock. The case of the missing front door isn't that uncommon, consider lobbies and enclosed front porches. With some businesses, there may be a door that is capable of locking but people enter without knocking assuming there is a public lobby on the other side. If you have an unlocked front door, the meaning depends on context. In some areas, friends and neighbors assume they can enter without knocking or prior announcment but strangers should not. Porches frequently have a door that latches but has no keyhole. It is generally assumed that you may enter the porch to go knock on the front door behind it but that you may not do so for the purpose of walking off with the barbecue grill.
In the case of WiFi, it makes good sense for people to make their access points public for the greater good but there are problems. Open access points can be used for malevelent behavior such as spamming, hacking, and piracy. Also, ISPs that sell discounted connections on the basis of use by a single household don't want you sharing your access with your neighbors. Some means of identification is needed. Unfortunately, this is usually currently handled by overpriced wifi roaming network accounts. But consider the social contract of, I will open my access point to you if you open yours to me so we both can get access away from home. Indeed, I can see one form of "open" network where anyone can get an account provided they provide access themselves. This eliminates two concerns of upstream ISPs: identification and you don't have mooches using the ISPs bandwidth via their neighbors without paying for access themselves. The next level would not require you to have an open access point but would require you to have a paid (typically landline) internet access.
There needs to be a general way to provide roaming authentication that provides for a traceable identity, notifies your upstream ISP that a third party is responsible for traffic rather than the the subscriber, allows filtering of traffic if a wireless account has been misused, prevents password capture, and allows optional blocking of those who do not already have internet access.
One approach would be to establish an encrypted IP tunnel to the "home" ISP. That way, the home ISP could handle authentication, logging, and filtering and any abusive packets would be seen as coming from the home ISPs netblock so complaints would go to the appropriate party. One would simply block all net access except from known computers or traffic directed at a wireless tunnel port (say port 802). This has performance issues as traffic must be carried further but requires less to implement. But it requires the cooperation only of those setting up the access point and the roamer's home ISP (or any machine they control as a gateway). If the ISP upstream from the Access point wants to block, it can block that one port. And it removes the blame for any inappropriate activity from the access point owner. Mobile IP is similar but less secure.
In the longer term, a way of VLAN tagging foreign traffic to your upstream ISP would be good. This would provide better performance while letting ISPs filter and monitor traffic but requires cooperation of your home and roaming ISPs, router vendors, DSL/cable modem vendors, etc.
Ultimately, any solution needs to be an internet standard with its own name/number so you can require that your ISP, client OS, and access point comply with the standard. A standard would ideally in
Actually, while this formfactor is less useful tan a laptop in some applications it is more useful in others. Sometimes the folding design of a traditional laptop gets in the way. Aside from the cost, this would be a good replacement for i-Opener style projects.
A web pad like this is sort of a lapless laptop for couch potatoes. Looks like you could use it on the couch or out on the deck (waterproof in case it gets rained on). It would also be good in a bar since it is apparently beer resistant. For bar use, I would want a shoulder strap (so you can take it with you when you go to the bathroom) and a lock slot. If you want a real keyboard, you plug in a USB keyboard and if it is destroyed by a beverage the damage is limited. This would make a nice ebook or IM widget. It would fit on the kitchen counter or table (think 3M Audrey/I-Opener).
Mount it on the sunvisor of your car for a GPS navigation system. I already did this with an iOpener. It has some features that are significantly better than the iOpener: touchscreen (major advantage in this case), instant on/off works, built in battery, built in keyboard/mouse, smaller vertical size obstructs view less, audio output jacks (for MP3/ogg player), hard drive built in, and WiFi (so you can download gps coordinates, music, etc. from your home lan at the beginning of a trip or use as a browser/im/email/voip phone system near a hot spot). If I could afford to shell out $800 right now, I would replace my iopener in a heartbeat. One feature that would be useful in this application is the ability to automatically begin shutdown when the ignition is turned off. With a USB DVD drive, you could also play movies on this. Also, this could be strapped to the back of a headrest for use as an incar DVD player (with external drive). Unfortunately, I think in this case "client" means the same as "host" rather than "slave" (or "device" in USB spec parlance).
Some suggestions for future models:
I once reduced the effect of an accident by speeding. Another driver on the interstate suffered from indecision when he found himself in a turn lane he didn't want to be in and ended up hitting the end of a barrier head on and spinning off it to strike my vehicle. Although I actually felt his vehicle strike the rear corner of mine, there was zero damage because I was able to speed up enough to reduce the force of impact to within elastic limits. On the other hand, if I had not done so the consequences could have been worse than some crumpled metal. It could have led to loss of control of my vehicle which was in a traffic lane which could have caused my vehicle to strike other vehicles and precipitated a major accident.
At the very least, a system like this needs to be designed to prevent systematic speeding but allow an overspeed budget for emergency manuevers. However, that still might not be sufficient to deal with trips to the hospital, emergency situations in bad neighborhoods, and pursuit by someone intent on killing you (such as being stalked by an abusive spouse in retaliation for leaving). There are also situations like tornadoes, hurricanes, or the (often exagerated) threat of WMD use.
There are a variety of GPS errors that could affect speed calculations. In some cases, these could cause your vehicle to slow to well below the speed limit. But by the rule of unintended consequences they could also cause the vehicle to exceed the speed limit. Drivers of vehicles with such devices (without an overspeed budget) will discover a new form of cruise control. Put the pedal to the metal and let the electronics keep track of the speed limits; if the error is in your favor, you get to go too fast. Hopefully the driver will react before striking another vehicle. If drivers got used to driving this way, they might also get lazy and let the car determine the safe speed instead of their own judgement in rainy conditions.
As the parent suggests, the GPS system (unless all vehicles are so equipped) will also choose a speed that can differ significantly from the consensus of other drivers on the same road; the resulting differentials can be more dangerous than speeding.
Also, if you are driving a long distance and likely to get tired, it can be safer to speed while you are still alert so you can slow down when your alertness drops, thus maximizing the alertness per mile traveled ratio.
I doubt the US is spending even close to that on alternative energy research. Not to diminish the problems of those with erectile dysfunction but a cure for cancer or free energy would probably do a lot more people a lot more good for the money.
Actually, I think you are diminishing the problems of those with ED. And engaging in the common fallacy that no enterprise is worth undertaking if there is a better undertaking. If we were actually to focus 100% of our efforts on the key problems chances are we would shoot ourselves in the foot because innovation in those areas will ulitimately depend on innovation in others and because scientific discoveries often occur when you are looking for something else.
There are about 3 billion men in the world with a life expectancy of around 70 years. As a rough rule of thumb, the probability of erectile disfunction is a mans age with a percent sign tacked on the end. So, about 2.1 billion people will suffer from ED. Not to mention their partners. So, $16billion in research is about $8 per person who would be helped. Not even counting future generations. Global income is around $5500 per person. That means that $8 represents about 0.004% of a mans lifetime income but it makes a substantial difference in quality of life. However, existing treatments are less than 100% effective and cost more than $8 per DOSE not per lifetime.
Why divert money from one benificial activity to another when you could be diverting money from a detrimental activity?
It is much more productive to make the comparison between spending money on alternative energy and the cost of the war on Iraq. We have spent $180 billion on the war so far. Not to mention the human cost. If you spent that money on Negawatts, thermal depolymerization and other biomass projects, hybrid cars, etc. we would go a long way to eliminating our dependency on middle eastern oil and reduce greenhouse emissions considerably. Negawatts includes replacing all incandescent lightbulbs with compact flourescent, installing decent reflectors in all light fixtures, and installing more efficient motors. Just the lighting improvements are enough to make the US go from a net energy importer to a net energy export. And, we would actually get all the money spent back many times over in future cost savings.
One of the fundamental flaws in GPL is that it focuses on punishing bad behavior rather than enabling good behavior. Yes, the GPL prevents some companies from using open source software and not giving anything back. But it also interferes with more altruistic companies that would like to give something back.
To make money, you typically have to strike a balance between giving things away and holding something back. Free samples, trial downloads, corporate philanthropy, and free consultations, are a few examples of how giving something away is present in almost every line of business. But very few businesses can survive without holding something back. A mexican restaurant may give free chips and salsa, but they can't give away all the meals. With software, there is more potential to give stuff away because the marginal cost is zero, unlike food, but somehow one still needs to pay for the initial cost of development. If you can lower the initial cost incorporating free software, then it becomes economical to charge less for the software or give more away. A lot of businesses do err on the side of holding too much back and it ultimately hurts consumers and often the companies themselves. I would like to see them do better but using GPL to force that causes too much collateral damage. It actually helps the big greedy corporations by hurting the small inovative ones.
GPL holds something back too. Something that can make incorporating free software too expensive - the right to earn a living. And don't think we can survive without businesses, either. Open source will hopefully replace commercial software for a lot of the more common stuff but there is a lot of more specialized software that someone will still need to pay for.
GPL advocates focus on trying to coerce big greedy corporations but hurts small socially conscious businesses. The large corporations can afford to rewrite everything they need and let their cusomters foot the bill. Yes, some of them may make some token efforts at giving away open source code where it does not hurt their business models. In most cases, this is because they are selling hardware and can afford to give away some software. A few companies can make money packaging distributions (and, oddly, they donate surprisingly little in the way of useful code back to the community).
More effort should be put into making consumers socially conscious. If consumers make ethical buying decisions, the companies have to follow. Besides educating consumers, they have to be given real choices. Hurting honest companies does not help in that regard.
I am also much more concerned about whether companies provide source code to their products than whether they give them away for free.
Consider GPS mapping software. There is an open source package out there (roadmap) that has essentially stagnated. And it needs a lot of work. If it was BSD licensed, I would have been tempted to do a lot of work on it and get companies like taxi cab companies, utility companies, pizza delivery, and the trucking industry to put food on my table while I worked on it. But I certainly can't afford to do the months of work the program needs without some way to produce income. All the new features and bugfixes that weren't related to dispatching commercial vehicles could be given back to the community immediately and the commercial features more gradually. Everyone would have benefitted. Users would not have had to wait five minutes while the program tries to draw a street level map of the entire country. Users would be able to enter an address and actually have it match (currently, most matches fail because the map database has the subdivision names instead of city names). Ham radio operators would be able to use it for APRS. And there would be features that are required for support vehicles for events like the MS150 bike tour. Maybe there wouldn't have been as much benefit as if someone who could afford to do so put extensive work into
I keep hearing people talk about how they want a music player with an FM "tuner", as if calling it a "tuner" will somehow make it more special or techno-sounding than it really is...a crappy FM "radio".
The people you are criticising aren't being pretentious, they are just far more knowledgable in this area than you are. Tuner is not being used as a euphemism for a radio. The tuner module is a component of a radio (or TV), the major components being the power supply, user interface (which in the old days often involved strings and pulleys), tuner, and the amplifier. For many years, in quality stereos, the tuner was often a seperate box but even a cheap shit $10 radio had a tuner though it may not have been explicitly called that if it wasn't a separate standardized module. It wasn't always called a tuner. A portable audio player already has an audio amplifier, power supply, and a user interface so it just needs the tuner part. Even more importantly, if you ask for a radio you might get it; some idiot will design a unit with a radio in the same box and a switch to select output the headphones connect to. Or at least you will get a device that adds radio functionality but nothing else. In a decent product, the tuner would be able to feed the audio output mixer directly or feed into the ADC so that you can record radio shows. In a spiffier product, you would be able to do the same with TV broadcasts/cable. When combined with a digital product, a "tuner" is typically a little metal box containing the RF components from the noise generating digital components. Also consider that many devices such as TVs, VCRs, DVD recorders, and PVRs contain "tuners", in some cases (such as picture-in-picture TVs) more than one.
Possible new Slashdot moderation categories:
Anyone notice how this happened right after they found that guy in California with names of 36,000 (not a typo) boys in notebooks?
Apparently journalists aren't very good at math. The man was 63 years old. If he started at 12 years old, that is 41 years. Subtract the 12 years he was in jail and you get 29 years, that is 1241 incidents a year or 3.4 incidents per day. Yes, the guy appears to have really molested kids and been arrested about 9 times. But 36000? It is physically possible but doing it without being arreseted more often than he was is another matter. That is 4000 incidents per arrest. Even Michael Jackson couldn't do that and he built an amusement park for kids. Even if his journals are real, they probably record more fantasies than reality. Or someone planted fake notebooks on a random repeat offender so they could pass repressive laws. This happened just three days after Jackson (who was distracting the media from news about important stories like the Downing Street Memo ) was acquited.
You forgot about another set of problems: vote-buying & extortion.
It is much easier and more effective to commit election fraud via tampering with the counting process. It was, however, specifically with an eye towards goon squads that I specifically stipulated that individual voters could chose to discard their receipt before leaving the polling place. If you are concerned, about these things, however, there was a system with graphically encrypted receipts discussed here a while back.
Condorcet methods have their advantages, but they're somewhat vulnerable to strategic voting, and almost no one understands them. If you want a different system, use approval voting -- it's better, and much easier for Joe Voter to understand.
I don't think approval voting is as good as condorcet though it is better than the current system. All usable systems are somewhat vulnerable to strategic voting but almost any system is less vulnerable than our current system which basically demands strategic voting. Some have argued that approval voting is less vulnerable to strategic voting than condorcet but it isn't very convincing. Indeed, I can easily see both democrats and republicans not checking the box for a moderate third candidate (who otherwise would win outright) in order to bury them. Approval voting as it would likely be implemented on old voting equipment would be extremely vulnerable to tampering. You can get around this by requiring an explicit yes or no rather than selecting but ranking systems prevent the incorrect use of old equipment. Ranking candidates, which is what the general public needs to understand, is not hard to understand. The tabulating methods are confusing but anyone who wants to understand those can find documents that explain how and why particular systems are used. electionmethods.org and wikipedia have more info for those who want to find out more.
The voter does NOT take the paper with him.
Actually, letting the voter take a copy of the paper with them, and verify it later, is an ESSENTIAL safegaurd against fraud at all stages of the process. When you have verified your identity, you should be given a token with a unique serial number chosen randomly from a drum of such tokens. This token is used to activate the voting machine and the serial number is recorded on all 4 paper copies of the vote:
The serial number of the token/vote is NOT recorded during the registration checking process. Neither is the time. Once they have the tokens, voters are allowed to go to any voting machine in any order and are allowed to wait until there are other voters present to protect against time stamps.
There is a locking clear cover over the roll receipt that allows a person to see the roll copies as well as the tear off copies. The voter checks that all 4 copies match their vote before leaving the booth. Once they tell the voting machine this is the case, the machine does a form feed which hides the vote from view.
Votes are not merely counted, they are listed. All unused tokens are also listed on a separate list. Thus, for each candidate in the presidential race, there is a list of millions of serial numbers. These are checked by any individual or organization that wishes to do so for:
No serial numbers that don't fall in the range of numbers actually allocated to some precinct and actually used
No serial numbers that also appear on the unused token list or are duplicated on another candidates list
The number of serial numbers matches the official total.
The number of serial numbers for each precinct match the official counts for that precinct.
No serial numbers on the void list appear on any candidates list.
The total number of serial numbers appearing in any candidates list from a given preceinct exactly matches the number of people who voted in that precinct. (It is not allowed to leave a vote blank, you must either vote for a specific candidate or "no preference" in each race before the machine will accept and print your vote).
Keeping the receipts on rolls is not as anonymous as dropping separated receipts in a box, so safegaurds are suggested above to avoid time/order based privacy attacks. But using rolls protects against voter error in not putting the main copy of the ballot in a box (which leads to discrepencies), it protects against individual ballots being discarded if the person handling the ballots doesn't like the votes cast, and it allows for easier automatic counting using a roll fed scanner. Indeed, recounts can be done while the election is still proceeding. As each roll is taken out of the voting machines, it can be fed through a device with two reels and a large gap in between and a feed roller. Each monitoring organization (including watchdog groups and each political party) can put a scanner head connected t
You need a simple hand-held reader from a 3rd party to verify the accuracy of the 2D codes, or a government built one.
There is a simple way to avoid the problem of the 2D bar codes not matching the human readable version. Make the human readable version and the machine readable version the same copy by printing a mark sense style ballot. Checks can be built in (the machine can look at empty boxes as well as filled in ones) so that the machine can't print misaligned registration marks to produce an off by one error and OCR (more reliable in this situation than most because the vocabulary is very limited) can be used to insure that the candidate names have not been reordered.
In my opinion - I just don't see why we cannot create a simple system to allow you to enter your government peronal ID number (Social Security in US, Social Insurance Number in Canada) and a password to allow you the ability to vote online.
Botnets or viruses could easily change your vote after you entered your SSN and password.
Well, my point is that it's possible for cars now. Cars have different acceleration needs than a diesel locomotive, y'know?
Actually, the traction portion of a modern electric bus is designed similarly to a diesel-electric locomotive and can blow the doors off of a beamer. Oddly, blowing the doors off of a beamer is a safety consideration. Because if you don't, the idiot in the beamer trys to cut off the bus and causes an accident. Which doesn't hurt the bus but makes you late on your route. What slows the Diesel-electric locomotive down is pulling 200 cars loaded with coal. Series DC electric motors have extremely high torque at low speeds and can be coupled to the wheel through a fixed gear ratio (if any) and go from starting to highway speeds. Unfortunately, commercial hybrid cars don't use series hybrid designs like locomotives and don't have a motor on each wheel. Instead, they try to shave motor costs by running a parallel hybrid configuration (boost/buck like an APC UPS). The technology has been here for years. Car companies just aren't using it, probably for cost reasons.
It is NOT in the best interest of the lender to loan more than can be repaid with a foreclosure of the property.
Exactly. Which is why if the difference between the sellers asking price (based on sellers appraisal) or the negotiated price and the bank's appraisal is significantly less than the downpayment, the bank will lend the money. So, if the price of the house is $150K and the buyer puts up a $30K downpayment and the bank's appraiser says the house is worth $140K, the bank will approve the loan. If there is a foreclosure, the buyer, not the bank, is out the difference. If the discrepancy is significant, it is the buyer that may nix the sale, though by that time they may be too emotionally invested in the house and have spent too much time on it to back out.
Further, if the bank's appraiser says the above mentioned house is worth $150K, it may not come back to haunt the appraiser unless there is no downpayment. If there are a lot of cases where there is a discrepancy, the bank might get wary even though it hasn't lost any money but the time the initial sale is made and the time of foreclosure are separated in time so the appraiser can try to blame the difference on changes in market conditions or deterioration of the house. Also, in the several years that have passed between the sale and the foreclosure, appreciation will have boosted the price of the house so the bank actually can sell it for the previously inflated appraised value.
I think I see the problem. Unfortunately, "gentrification" is a fact of life. If a buyer is willing to pay more than you for a property and an owner is willing to sell it, why is this the fault of the agent or appraiser?
If the value of only one house is inflated, buyers will be reluctant to buy that property. But when the inflated prices become wide spread, the buyers only alternative may be not to buy any house.
You decide to sell your car and you place an ad in the newspaper. They each offer you a different amount. Which offer will you take? The highest, middle, or lowest? Be honest!
There are many cases where honest people may choose a fair price rather than the "best" price. I have sold things for less than the maximum I could get for them and I have bought things for more than the asking price if they were substantially undervalued. Yes, if I go to a thrift store and find something that was underpriced but many other things were overpriced, I may not offer them a higher price. And I might not offer someone a fair price on an undervalued item if I don't think they would ever extend me the same courtesy. My last two cars were sold for $0. In the first case, the neighbor who I gave it to offered money but he had been helpful in the past. In the second case, I was under time pressure and offered the car to a poor couple.
WTF? What does this have to do with property values?
I was pointing out that this kind of pressure affects people in many professions. People are often pressured to behave unethically and rather than fight the pressure or admit to themselves they are compromising their ethics, they rely on rationalization and denial to keep their egos intact.
As for my mom's mortgage, the point was that she did get a better deal than she thought she did, or at least due to outside circumstances (runaway appreciation) she was better off with a deal that seemed unfair at the time than she would have been if the house had been liquidated and she had to buy or rent another house. But people of her generation have a lot of difficulty understanding the economic problems facing people in the following generations.
As for your rent problem, it would appear to me that you need to be a property owner rather than a renter.
That is not a viable option. In fact, I know of few single people who make an honest living who are able to do that on their own. Usually, it requires at least two people and/or help from the families. A
This could be useful for breaking the cycle that prevents adoption of IPv6. ISPs don't provide service because there isn't enough user demand. Users don't demand it in part because a lot of software would break. And software developers don't provide IPv6 support because their ISP doesn't support IPv6. Yes, you can configure tunneling software but if you are behind a NATing and Firewalling router, there are likely to be some problems and by the time you are done configuring it, you don't have time to work on the software; this project actually replaces a commonly used router with one that enables IPv6 rather than getting in the way. And likewise, most people can't really switch to IPv6 only until almost everyone supports IPv6. So, this could help provide critical mass.
The web page is pretty vague about what is actually going on under the hood. Presumably this distribution creates a tunnel to some IPv6 relay router but what gateway or tunneling protocol is used is not specified.
Bzzzzt. Sorry, but you are incorrect. Real estate agents are NOT appraisers. The training is different and the licensing is different. No lender in their right mind would ever consider using an appraisal from an agent or broker and put their money at risk.
I did not say real estate agents are appraisers. I said appraisers are real estate agents. While that might not be true in some cases, I suspect it is in most. I.E. A person typically starts as a real estate agent and then gets certified as an appraiser. I think they can even be a real estate agent and an appraiser simultaneously, though in many places they might be prevented from serving both roles on the same property. IIRC, one of the houses I lived in actually was actually appraised by the selling agent (who was also an appraiser).
Even if the apraiser is not and has never been a real estate agent, I think appraisers are usually hired by either the selling agent or in some cases by the city tax assessors office. In some cases the buyer or the bank may hire an appraiser for a second appraisal but I suspect the banks usually will take an "independent" appraiser hired by the seller at their word. Money tends to corrupt even when people are trying to be honest.
If you are an appraiser try the following experiment, either in reality or in your head. Divide your selling broker clients randomly into two groups with about equal business from each. For the first group, highball every estimate by $2500 and for the second group lowball every estimate by $2500. At the end of one year, are you still getting the same amount of business from each group? Not likely. Consciously or subconsciously, they are going to favor the appraiser who gives them the results they like. Now if your price is way to high and the houses don't sell, then it will bite you in the ass. Appraisals are often done on the basis of comparable houses. So, if a few appraisals in the neighborhood were high and the others were accurate, this tends to raise the future appraisals on all the houses in the neighborhood.
This is basically a passive conspiracy, which is much more common than an active conspiracy. Nobody may get together and explicitly agree to behave in a certain way but the collective self interest of a group of people (often at odds with the interests of society) can cause them to behave collectively. Sometimes it is pretty subtle. Sometimes individuals are consciously trying to pursue particular results other times it is more subtle. Advertisers affect media. Sometimes they are blatant about it (pulling or threatening to pull advertisments in response to a story). In other cases, the advertisers may simply complain to editors that the story could have been written better when it doesn't come out in their favor and of course they don't complain if it does. Reporters learn to think twice before saying anything that would adversely affect an advertiser and they don't think twice if it wouldn't. Funders affect the outcome of scientific studies. While scientists as a whole are more honest than most other professions, the standard of proof for reaching a conclusion that might offend the funding organization is going to be higher than for conclusions that are neutral or come out in their favor. Less honest scientists will more deliberately skew results in favor of the funder and consequently will get more grants than the honest ones. Eventually, the more honest ones will become envious of their peers or strapped for grant money. Consultants who prepare results that say what the client wants to hear get more repeat business than those that don't. Intellegence analysts who say there are WMDs in Iraq get promoted, those that say there aren't get passed over (actually, in that case there reportedly were explicit instructions to find intelligence that justified the war rather than provide accurate intelligence). General Eric Shinseki was forced to retire because he accurately predicted that the war in Iraq would requir
American Cell Phone Company buys cell phone part pre-assembled from China for $20 and battery from Korea for $10, then does final assembly here and charges $61 wholesale to the gov't.
Actually, you are pretty close although you are looking at cell phone prices after rebates. More likely scenario: Halliburton buys a cell phone for $200 from nokia, sanyo, erickson, etc. Then they add a US manufactured Halliburton label and charge the govenment $500. Now it is 60% US made on a value added basis. Or maybe they add one of those totally ineffective US made battery booster labels. If they want to be a little less blatent, they pay to have a custom plastic case with a metal ALISA clip (instead of the plastic clips that break once a month) molded and claim the higher cost is due to the phone being military/law enforcement spec and customized. Or they pay a machine shop to machine the case out of magnesium and charge the government $1000. Or, perhaps they need shoe phones in the fight against shoe bombers.
Also, while it is very difficult to make a device that has 50% of semiconductors made in the US (even though there are 133 semiconductor fabs in the US), you can still can get bare circuit boards made in the US and have assembly done in the US. It will cost more but driving up the US cost significatly while slightly lowering the foreign cost helps you satisfy the US requirement. It is even getting harder to know where chips are manufactured. None of the semiconductors on the last two boards I designed are labeled as to their country of origin, due to the small size of the surface mount parts.
One thing that does make it more feasabile to use 50% US made components is the fact that those parts which are made in the US are the more expensive parts. $0.14 logic gate chips are made outside the US but many high end CPUs, Memory, and possibly FPGAs are made in the US. Embedded CPUs are probably mostly foreign made but if you slap a Pentium 4 in your cell phone (and a car battery to power it) you could meet the US made critera. Or add an FPGA based encryption chip to the phone.
Almost all of these more complicated approaches actually would boost the local economy so they will probably go with the $300 Halliburton label since in contributes nothing to the actual economy but lines the pockets of corrupt corporations and goverment employees.
I agree on your point on senseless real estate appreciation and have been making similar comments myself for years. Houses do not appreciate, they depreciate; the damn things fall apart. The land may, however, may appreciate in value if it is in a popular area (i.e. a city). I always thought that real estate appreciation was a scam concocted by real estate agents to offset their commissions. If every time you sold your house it sold for the same price that you bought it for, you would be out $10,000 in commissions. This would make you seriously look at why you are paying $10,000 for a (usually incompetent) agent. Fortunately, appraisals are done by real estate agents; often not the agent selling the house but a buddy. So, you jack up the appraisal of the house by at least the amount of the commissions so you don't pay too much attention to why you are paying five times as much for a real estate bimbo to sell your house as you would a surgeon for life saving surgery (the hospital will make up the difference, though). Did the seller do any remodelling or redecorating? Add the cost of that (plus some) to the appraisal as well. Never mind that they buyer will probably have to spend more money undoing the "improvements".
These real estate idiots are way behind on using technology and actual information to sell houses. A few now offer panoramic camera views. A large number of people who buy houses do so in a different city than the one they now live in and those that live in the same city have better things to do with their time than shlep around to houses that could have been ruled out with a real estate bimbo who insists on showing houses during customers working hours. Hire some architecture students to draw up a decent floorplan/3D model of the house, take pictures that are linked so you can select any view of each room from the floorplan, and photograph, catalog, and test all ethernet, phone, cable tv, and electrical outlets including which circuit breaker they connect to. Real estate agent incompetence and the constant stream of disinterested potential buyers traipsing through also severely impacts the lives of people who live in rental property which is being sold to a new landlord. Give people decent virtual tours at their convenience and then let them visit the house only if it is really one of their top candidates.
Besides making real estate agents among the top ten overpaid professions in America, housing is not affordable to those entering the housing market. When the baby boomers, who bought their first houses for realistic prices before appreciation ran amok under favorable loan terms, die off the bubble will have to burst.
I dont know if you are legally responsible, but do you want to help the anonomous distribution of child pornography, especially if the children are actually being harmed?
Well, given that it can be difficult to transmit money anonymously, why not? If the distribution is not providing incentive for people to create new pornography and in the process victimize children I don't have a big problem with it. I would rather see old child porn and synthetic child porn distributed than create a market for new child porn. Attempts at censorship are likely to create a financial incentive. Fantasies have no morality. It is actions that have morality. By analogy, it is ok (and probably quite common) to fantasize about killing your boss but acting on those fantasies is not ok. Often repeated claims that pornography causes people to victimize others are not supported by the facts. People have a very broad range of sexual fantasies and for almost all of them there are ethical ways to act out or sublimate those desires. Trying to supress those desires instead of accepting them is more likely to result in behavior that is harmful to others. Repression is linked to sex crimes. Turned on primarily by children? Find an adult who is into age play. Most child sexual abuse is not perpetrated by people primarily attracted to children but is situational expediency. Interestingly, those who are fixated on children tend to see themselves as children and are seeking what they perceive as other children rather than an adult-child power dynamic. Protecting the children is an argument often used to infringe on the rights of adults.
Paypal is used to give some level of anonymity in financial transactions but the US government would have no trouble obtaining paypal records. Yes, people could transmit money by swiss bank accounts but the US government now has access to swiss bank accounts.
Systems like Tor have limited capacity that limits how much spammer's can send. So SPAM may hurt tor much more than tor helps spammers. Also, spamers produce large amounts of traffic that can be detected and blocked at the point where it enters the tor network.
As for the terrorism argument, one must first put terrorism in perspective. Even in 2001, the year of the 9/11 and anthrax attacks, you were about ten times more likely to die of suicide than of a terrorist attack. In 2001, terrorism accounted for about 0.1% of all deaths in the US. Or your chances of dying from terrorism that year were around 0.001%. More Americans died of Asthma in 2001 than terrorism. Likewise for malnutrition, ulcers, medical mistakes, and drowning. Protecting against terrorism has been used as an argument to undermine constitutional freedoms. Far more people have been killed by their own governments than by terrorism. In the last century worldwide, genocide has probably killed around 1% of the population and that does not count governments killing political opponents.
One of the factors that helped Zero Knowledge become defunct was their funding from the CIA. Can you say "conflict of interest"?
Perhaps you have confused Zero Knowledges Freedom Network with SafeWeb. Articles about the closure of the partially CIA funded Safeweb also mentioned the recent closure of Freedom Network. Similarly, slashdot discussions of Freedom Network 's closure also discussed safeweb's CIA connections.
Algae has one advantage over regular plants - it probably doesn't care about gravity so there is no need to spin a section of the station to make artificial gravity and then try to reflect sunlight in. Ordinary plants try to grow "upwards", for the most part. The weight issue might be with the water the algae grows in more than the algae itself. Algaes efficency may be per photon rather than per pound.
People don't like nuclear power because of incidents like three mile island and Chernobly ,yet more damage is done each year by the cumulitive effects of coal/gas and oil plants.
I read somewhere that more people die in coal mines in russia every year than the total death toll (including long term cancer deaths) from chernobyl. And chernobyl was a crappy design that would not be allowed in the US. Cancer death estimates vary considerably, however. Additional eurasian cancer deaths would have to be compared to polution related deaths from power plants (which kills thousands every year). Directly attributable deaths for nuclear power, per terawatt years of power generated are 8 for nuclear power, 85 for natural gas, 342 for coal, and 883 for hydroelectric (dam's break). Add some cancer deaths for nuclear and pollution related deaths from fossil fuels. And add global warming related deaths to fossil fuels. Commercial power plants have 11000 reactor years of operation in over 30 countries with two major accidents. That is about one accident per 100 power plants over the projected life of the reactor and future accidents are likely to resemble three mile island rather than chernobyl. And coal plants release more radiation into the atmosphere than nuclear plants (yep, coal contains radioactive material).
Average radiation exposure to 2 million people around three mile island was 1mrem compared to 6mrem for a set of chest xrays. Exposure at the plant boundary was 100mrem which is less than the annual background exposure. So, even if you were standing near the plant, your total lifetime radiation exposure was increased by about 1.2%.
Studies indicate that US Nuclear reactors will survive a direct hit from a 767.
Nuclear waste disposal is an issue. Integral Fast Reactors have the potential to reduce the magnitude of this problem considerably.
About a year ago, James Lovelock, of Gaia fame, proposed nuclear power as the only alternative that could stem global warming in time
There is one new technology that is more suited for oil replacement and could be a decent alternative to nuclear as a fossil fuel replacement: Thermal Depolymerization . That is a new technology but a pilot plant is producing 400 barrels of oil per day. When run off of plant (or even animal) material, the net greenhouse emissions are zero and the process consumes waste (and a wider variety of waste than other technologies) rather than creating it.
I live about 30 miles from two nuclear power plants (and the site of what might be the first new power plant built in the US) and less than half a mile from a research reactor.
The obsession with low prices in this country creates a Tragedy of the Commons situation. We save money buying at walmart but in doing so, jobs move overseas and the jobs which stay here become less lucrative. Each individual saves some money by buying at walmart and that individuals own choice to buy at walmart (or buy cheap products in general) or not ultimately doesn't make much difference in whether their job gets offshored or not but collectively the behavior cuts jobs. As long as your neighbors buy the cheap stuff, your job still goes overseas. This is quite different from Henry Fords original goal to pay his workers enough money that they could afford to buy his cars. Every man for himself leaves us all vulnerable, unless we own a multinational corporation.
And as more people are unemployed or less gainfully employed we have less money to buy things so we have to buy cheap creating a vicious circle.
While the US economy appears to be growing, all this free market out of control and globalization the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The article In Praise of Prosperity points out that while GDP has gone up the real incomes of 90% of the population went down. It also points out that 7 out of 10 of the highest GDP per capita nations are social democracies. And that America's GDP went up only because we are working 25% more hours while other countries like France can sustain the same GDP growth while reducing the hours worked by 25%. So, if we both started at 40 hours a week, we are working 50 hours when the french are down to 30.
As the situation for Americans continues to deteriorate, we become ripe targets for palingenetic ultranationalist populism. And to distract people from the real problems they will redirect peoples discontent towards immigrants, sexual minorities, and other marginal groups. But there is nothing to worry about until you see campaigns to make it impossible for illegal aliens to get drivers licenses, vigilantes patrolling the border, or denying civil rights and jobs to homosexuals.
Oh... wait.
The "Reluctant Bush Responder in Mixed Political Company" hypothesis is also discredited in that report. The hypothesis that kerry supporters would seek out exit polsters is not consistent with the differences in response rates in bush vs kerry districts. And if the discrepency was due to exit poll respondants lying about who they voted for, there would have to be more republican liars than democrats and you would expect to see the effect in the senate race results but that was not the case.
So, you have one report that says exit poll response rates were skewed in favor of kerry but offers nothing to substantiate that claim and you have another report that says this is not true and backs that claim up.