The next time the polatitions sit down to watch cable or satellite tv, they can thank NASA's budget. There are several new power houses up there, but there are several getting very old and it will take the shuttle to remove the old one and place a new one in its place.
The shuttle can only manage LEO. It's ability to retrieve satellites isn't actually of much use. Since there arn't many satellites in such a low orbit to be retrieved in the first place...
I guess the reason we have such sprawl is at least partially attributable to the cold war and the idea that you needed to spread people out away from population centers.
There's also the issue of age. Are there any urban areas in the US which have been urban areas longer than a few hundred years?
Seriously, I fail to see what the problem is... what exactly would you want Mercedes to do instead? Make power trains that will get all borked up if someone tries to use petrol?
Ironically it appears to be some of the most modern engines which are choosy about fuel. Such as sensors breaking if there is too much ethanol in the mix or injectors failing with "biodiesel". With engines from the 1970's being able to run on 20% ethanol or straight vegetable oil just poured in the tank!
It will be difficult to make a "biofuel" engine that won't run just fine on petroleum.
It's perfectly possible to produce a "biofuel" which consumes more petroleum than making fuel from oil. "Corn ethanol" appears to fall into this catagory. It's also possible to produce "biofuels" which are direct replacements for "petrofuels". Which makes a lot more sense, considering vehicles are refueled considerably more frequently than they (or their engines) are replaced. One irony is that Rudolf Diesel and Frank Whittle used vegetable oil in their prototype engines. The only internal combustion engine designed from the start to use petrofuel is the Otto cycle engine. This fuel being considered a "waste product" in the late 19th century.
This is why we need to limit Congress to one term in each office. Nothing gets in the way of principle like rational self-interest.
IMHO Something more like "10 years per lifetime in any public office". Possibly also combined with only allowing someone who does not hold any public office to be nominated except if they are seeking reelection to exactly the same position. The latter would mean that a US Senator wanting to be US President would have to resign, as a Senator, first.
In my experience, windows installs ok, if you have the manufacturers install CD that came with the PC, or if the machine is totally popular and 'generic' as far as drivers go.
You can still wind up having to reboot the machine several times before it acknowlages all it's hardware though.
If you don't have the manufacturers install CD, it's generally a pain in the butt - you have to manually search for sound card drivers or video card drivers etc..
Even trickier if it's the network card which you lack drivers for...
The whole "only allowing people with Fords" thing, the problem would be that (a) people would be forced to buy a new car even if they already owned one that functions, (b) cars are expensive, and (c) I might want to drive another brand of car. So the metaphor implies (as far as I can figure), that people will have to buy new expensive equipment (I guess a computer) from the ISP in order to use the Internet, even if they already had that equipment, and they would have no choice in what brand of equipment they buy.
This is something which happens with existing ISPs. e.g. those who "only support Windows" or only provide configuration information in some kind of proprietary format.
It's you who 'doesn't get it'. Virtually all such companies appear to be equally careless with their customer information. And the 'full disclosure' of such data losses, which would be required if you were to have any chance of punishing the 'bad' companies does not exist.
It may even lead to those companies who are best at hiding it to appear to be the best.
As a consequence of modern day life we are *forced* to do business with at least some of these companies and so they have no incentive to do better. This is the sort of thing where legal sanctions *are* necessary.
The problem with legal sanctions is that the worst offenders include government and government contractors. Where there is quite literally no competition.
You don't need the "anti government" part, as if they were pro-government terrorists, their official name is "police" or "military"...:-)
Or they'd be attached to some "black project", called "intelligence operatives". It isn't exactly unknown for governments to be funding "regular" terrorists, even those such as the IRA who actually made an effort to target "government".
Once you have a real and valid envelope you give it to the vote seller with the ballot inside and already sealed... he gets a new envelope from the table head, which he pockets, and casts the vote with the envelope he was given. Then goes outside with the empty envelope and the process is repeated.
The fraudster in this case needs to be able to make the envelopes disappear. Being caught with a pocket full of such envelopes is not going to be good...
Petitioning the government, etc is not the 'problem', imho, the problem arises when Corporations seem to be doing the majority of the 'petitioning' and the majority of the 'contributions'... becoming a government of the corp, by the people, for the corp...
It's a non trivial problem to devise a system to allow "petitioning on government" which will not become overwhelmed by professional lobbiests. Representing both big business and extreme political views. Regular people (including small corporations) have lives to prevent them "petitioning" government 24/7. Big business can afford to pay others and "kooks" have the dedication to get their message over one way or another.
The problem is that people under 30 are apathetic and don't vote. Until the under 30 crowd votes with any kind of numbers that are comparable with other age groups, no one will pay much attention to them. If you take yourself out of the system, don't be surprised if you're not represented.
Maybe they don't vote because they are not represented. How many voting machines allow "spoiled ballots" or other ways for a voter to express that they don't want any of the candidates on offer?
Yes, the fact that the USA is the only first world country that denies ex-convicts the vote and even denying convicts the vote is quite rare.
However the US dosn't apply the same standards to holding public office. If this did happen it might have a much greater effect than preventing such people from voting.
I was a representative for a minority party during the 2000 elections in my country (Uruguay, one of the most transparent countries in the world in that area),
When it comes to transparency the US dosn't rate very highly. Including the widespread use of voting machines, which by their nature tend not to allow meaningful recounts.
Ballots are opened in front of representatives of every party, the table head lifts every vote so representatives from each party can verify that the vote was cast, and it is entered (in 2000 it was manually, but these days it's electronic I think).)
Electronic is bad when it comes to elections. It is hard to alter lots of physical ballot papers without getting caught. It's a hard task to make any electronic system anywhere near as secure.
Hypothetical vote buyers would have to buy the table heads in every subdivision, and make sure representatives from the other parties don't notice any strange behaviour from the table head (looking for scrathes, marks or whatever identificatory information was included.)
Scruitineering is a vital part of any fair electoral system. But it relys on an average member of the public being able to see what is going on. Introduce computers and even people with a PhD in Computer Science are going to have a hard time verifying what is actually happening.
(And ours is not a 2-party system, and even the majority party is made up of dozens of smaller parties which I expect would not all be involved in the collusion).
Conspiracies involving large number of people are unlikely, even without self interest preventing them conspiring in the first place. Note that the US isn't even a two party system, in some cases it's more of a one and a half party system. Especially where so called "open primaries" are involved. Independent scruitineers would probably be needed anywhere in the US.
But the particular pattern voting example could not happen under our system.
It is only possible where you have a large number of elections on one ballot paper. Having a huge number of elections at the same time appears to be something unique to the US. Where multiple elections happen in other parts of the world they use multiple ballot papers...
Actually, it may be easier than you think to sell a vote. Read more here: How Secret is Your Ballot? (1/3). Very interesting stuff. There are lots of ways in which someone can verify that you voted the way you claimed.
The method described appears to rely on having multiple elections on the same ballot. Something which just dosn't tend to happen anywhere outside the US. The "fix" is simply "one election one ballot paper".
Some people think paper is just the perfect solution for voting, but really it has many problems that can be solved by electronic voting when done carefully.
Which problems are these? There are problems with the US voting system which have nothing to do with the act of voting. Most obvious would be linking voter registers to membership of political parties and different nomination rules for candidates in the same election. AFAIK even Zimbabwe dosn't do either of these...
Goliath falls dead. After a stunned silence, the crowd turns back to tending breakfast around the campfire, content to go on with what they were doing. All of David's friends celebrate, but the politicians and leaders simply begin plotting a new strategy.
It looks like they might already have one. Currently "on test" in France with plans to extend to the entire EU.
Antibiotics are special chemicals that can kill certain things but don't hurt you. They're very carefully balanced, and therefore not particularly lethal. So the bacteria can evolve resistance to them, just like the resistance your own cells have.
It's more the case that antibiotics typically arn't toxic at all to eukaryotes, only to bacteria... Hardly suprising given that antibiotics are produced by eukaryotes, typically fungi, though IIRC there are also some produced by reptiles. Bacteria and eukaryotes differ substantially, such that something produced by a eukaryote to poison bacteria, without harm to itself, would be unlikely to be harmful to any other eukaryote. Humans and Penicillium chrysogenum have more in common with each other than either does with bacteria here.
What fraction of people that send you spam wind up in prison? Might help if law enforcement actually took much of an interest. Even if the spam itself isn't technically illegal most spammers break all sorts of laws.
Deliberate privacy violations are probably showing an even worse record.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not over yet. RIAA is still alive...
Or at least "undead".
They can be experts, or they can be amateurs, but they cannot be both at the same time.
Unless they have Multiple Personality Disorder. Which is probably easier for a corporation than with a real person.
So one of those (and we know which one) is a LIE.
If the enumerated states are not comprehensive (even if they are mutually exclusive) then none of them may apply.
Absolutely SHOCKED that the RIAA was bending the truth in order to justify its actions.
:)
Next up the Pope's religion together with some information about bears and trees
The next time the polatitions sit down to watch cable or satellite tv, they can thank NASA's budget. There are several new power houses up there, but there are several getting very old and it will take the shuttle to remove the old one and place a new one in its place.
The shuttle can only manage LEO. It's ability to retrieve satellites isn't actually of much use. Since there arn't many satellites in such a low orbit to be retrieved in the first place...
I guess the reason we have such sprawl is at least partially attributable to the cold war and the idea that you needed to spread people out away from population centers.
There's also the issue of age. Are there any urban areas in the US which have been urban areas longer than a few hundred years?
Seriously, I fail to see what the problem is... what exactly would you want Mercedes to do instead? Make power trains that will get all borked up if someone tries to use petrol?
Ironically it appears to be some of the most modern engines which are choosy about fuel. Such as sensors breaking if there is too much ethanol in the mix or injectors failing with "biodiesel". With engines from the 1970's being able to run on 20% ethanol or straight vegetable oil just poured in the tank!
It will be difficult to make a "biofuel" engine that won't run just fine on petroleum.
It's perfectly possible to produce a "biofuel" which consumes more petroleum than making fuel from oil. "Corn ethanol" appears to fall into this catagory.
It's also possible to produce "biofuels" which are direct replacements for "petrofuels". Which makes a lot more sense, considering vehicles are refueled considerably more frequently than they (or their engines) are replaced.
One irony is that Rudolf Diesel and Frank Whittle used vegetable oil in their prototype engines. The only internal combustion engine designed from the start to use petrofuel is the Otto cycle engine. This fuel being considered a "waste product" in the late 19th century.
This is why we need to limit Congress to one term in each office. Nothing gets in the way of principle like rational self-interest.
IMHO Something more like "10 years per lifetime in any public office". Possibly also combined with only allowing someone who does not hold any public office to be nominated except if they are seeking reelection to exactly the same position. The latter would mean that a US Senator wanting to be US President would have to resign, as a Senator, first.
In my experience, windows installs ok, if you have the manufacturers install CD that came with the PC, or if the machine is totally popular and 'generic' as far as drivers go.
You can still wind up having to reboot the machine several times before it acknowlages all it's hardware though.
If you don't have the manufacturers install CD, it's generally a pain in the butt - you have to manually search for sound card drivers or video card drivers etc..
Even trickier if it's the network card which you lack drivers for...
The whole "only allowing people with Fords" thing, the problem would be that (a) people would be forced to buy a new car even if they already owned one that functions, (b) cars are expensive, and (c) I might want to drive another brand of car. So the metaphor implies (as far as I can figure), that people will have to buy new expensive equipment (I guess a computer) from the ISP in order to use the Internet, even if they already had that equipment, and they would have no choice in what brand of equipment they buy.
This is something which happens with existing ISPs. e.g. those who "only support Windows" or only provide configuration information in some kind of proprietary format.
Municipalities want to build out broadband networks and make them the 5th utility, alongside natural gas, heating oil, water, and electricity.
No doubt there are still places where such utilities are owned by local government...
The Telcos are suing to prevent Municipalities from doing this.
Maybe they should counter sue arround a century's worth of "back rent" on the public land these telcos use to run their cables.
It's you who 'doesn't get it'. Virtually all such companies appear to be equally careless with their customer information. And the 'full disclosure' of such data losses, which would be required if you were to have any chance of punishing the 'bad' companies does not exist.
It may even lead to those companies who are best at hiding it to appear to be the best.
As a consequence of modern day life we are *forced* to do business with at least some of these companies and so they have no incentive to do better. This is the sort of thing where legal sanctions *are* necessary.
The problem with legal sanctions is that the worst offenders include government and government contractors. Where there is quite literally no competition.
You don't need the "anti government" part, as if they were pro-government terrorists, their official name is "police" or "military"... :-)
Or they'd be attached to some "black project", called "intelligence operatives". It isn't exactly unknown for governments to be funding "regular" terrorists, even those such as the IRA who actually made an effort to target "government".
Once you have a real and valid envelope you give it to the vote seller with the ballot inside and already sealed... he gets a new envelope from the table head, which he pockets, and casts the vote with the envelope he was given. Then goes outside with the empty envelope and the process is repeated.
The fraudster in this case needs to be able to make the envelopes disappear. Being caught with a pocket full of such envelopes is not going to be good...
Petitioning the government, etc is not the 'problem', imho, the problem arises when Corporations seem to be doing the majority of the 'petitioning' and the majority of the 'contributions'... becoming a government of the corp, by the people, for the corp...
It's a non trivial problem to devise a system to allow "petitioning on government" which will not become overwhelmed by professional lobbiests. Representing both big business and extreme political views. Regular people (including small corporations) have lives to prevent them "petitioning" government 24/7. Big business can afford to pay others and "kooks" have the dedication to get their message over one way or another.
The problem is that people under 30 are apathetic and don't vote. Until the under 30 crowd votes with any kind of numbers that are comparable with other age groups, no one will pay much attention to them. If you take yourself out of the system, don't be surprised if you're not represented.
Maybe they don't vote because they are not represented.
How many voting machines allow "spoiled ballots" or other ways for a voter to express that they don't want any of the candidates on offer?
Yes, the fact that the USA is the only first world country that denies ex-convicts the vote and even denying convicts the vote is quite rare.
However the US dosn't apply the same standards to holding public office. If this did happen it might have a much greater effect than preventing such people from voting.
I was a representative for a minority party during the 2000 elections in my country (Uruguay, one of the most transparent countries in the world in that area),
When it comes to transparency the US dosn't rate very highly. Including the widespread use of voting machines, which by their nature tend not to allow meaningful recounts.
Ballots are opened in front of representatives of every party, the table head lifts every vote so representatives from each party can verify that the vote was cast, and it is entered (in 2000 it was manually, but these days it's electronic I think).)
Electronic is bad when it comes to elections. It is hard to alter lots of physical ballot papers without getting caught. It's a hard task to make any electronic system anywhere near as secure.
Hypothetical vote buyers would have to buy the table heads in every subdivision, and make sure representatives from the other parties don't notice any strange behaviour from the table head (looking for scrathes, marks or whatever identificatory information was included.)
Scruitineering is a vital part of any fair electoral system. But it relys on an average member of the public being able to see what is going on. Introduce computers and even people with a PhD in Computer Science are going to have a hard time verifying what is actually happening.
(And ours is not a 2-party system, and even the majority party is made up of dozens of smaller parties which I expect would not all be involved in the collusion).
Conspiracies involving large number of people are unlikely, even without self interest preventing them conspiring in the first place. Note that the US isn't even a two party system, in some cases it's more of a one and a half party system. Especially where so called "open primaries" are involved. Independent scruitineers would probably be needed anywhere in the US.
But the particular pattern voting example could not happen under our system.
It is only possible where you have a large number of elections on one ballot paper. Having a huge number of elections at the same time appears to be something unique to the US. Where multiple elections happen in other parts of the world they use multiple ballot papers...
Its pretty hypocritical of the Government to persecute people for selling their vote, when politicians do it all the time.
:)
Being hypocritical appears to be a necessary qualification for being a politican
Actually, it may be easier than you think to sell a vote. Read more here: How Secret is Your Ballot? (1/3). Very interesting stuff. There are lots of ways in which someone can verify that you voted the way you claimed.
The method described appears to rely on having multiple elections on the same ballot. Something which just dosn't tend to happen anywhere outside the US. The "fix" is simply "one election one ballot paper".
Some people think paper is just the perfect solution for voting, but really it has many problems that can be solved by electronic voting when done carefully.
Which problems are these? There are problems with the US voting system which have nothing to do with the act of voting. Most obvious would be linking voter registers to membership of political parties and different nomination rules for candidates in the same election. AFAIK even Zimbabwe dosn't do either of these...
Goliath falls dead. After a stunned silence, the crowd turns back to tending breakfast around the campfire, content to go on with what they were doing. All of David's friends celebrate, but the politicians and leaders simply begin plotting a new strategy.
It looks like they might already have one. Currently "on test" in France with plans to extend to the entire EU.
Shouldn't she have taken a look at the illegality of RIAA's tactics like way, way back when RIAA first requested a motion for discovery?
Better late than never!
This surprises you after so many voted a potted plant back into the presidency after such obvious failure in 2004?
I didn't think the "Vote Ficus" campaign covered that election.
Antibiotics are special chemicals that can kill certain things but don't hurt you. They're very carefully balanced, and therefore not particularly lethal. So the bacteria can evolve resistance to them, just like the resistance your own cells have.
It's more the case that antibiotics typically arn't toxic at all to eukaryotes, only to bacteria... Hardly suprising given that antibiotics are produced by eukaryotes, typically fungi, though IIRC there are also some produced by reptiles. Bacteria and eukaryotes differ substantially, such that something produced by a eukaryote to poison bacteria, without harm to itself, would be unlikely to be harmful to any other eukaryote. Humans and Penicillium chrysogenum have more in common with each other than either does with bacteria here.
What fraction of people that send you spam wind up in prison?
Might help if law enforcement actually took much of an interest. Even if the spam itself isn't technically illegal most spammers break all sorts of laws.
Deliberate privacy violations are probably showing an even worse record.
Is there are law against it?