Funny thing is is that many of the companies aren't even US companies (Sony BMG, EMI, Universal etc.).
No doubt they'll claim to be "American" when they want the US Government to do something, but try any means possible to avoid paying taxes to the US Government.
I don't doubt that some people refrained from drinking, just as I don't doubt that the drug laws deter some people from using drugs. The problem is that the people who will be deterred will entirely consist of light to moderate users, i.e., the people who are the least part of the "problem" that you're trying to address.
Or if you prefer "users" rather than "abusers".
That's how prohibitions work, take an activity that is harmless to most people but detrimental to a few, restrict the freedom of those who aren't the problem, and heap endless amounts of negative social consequences on those who don't comply to "save them from themselves." Oh, and as a side benefit, expand police state powers while guaranteeing a generous revenue stream to organized crime.
For the latter any kind of prohibition is a "business opportunity" A prohibition is also likely to alter the way the drug in question is supplied. From dilute (e.g. beer) to concentrated (e.g. spirits) at least partly because the logistics involved in transporting an illegal drug.
Think about alcohol Prohibition. Before and after Prohibition, a majority of adult Americans drank alcohol at least occasionally. (Perhaps even during it, though we'll never know.) Yet the idea was popular enough to get passed via constitutional amendment, requiring the approval of two thirds of both houses of Congress AND all the state legislatures. Not that it wasn't stupid, it was *so* stupid that 13 years later it became the only amendment ever repealed.
With a lot of the current "war on drugs" being little different from US alcohol prohibition.
Never underestimate the ability of the American electorate to be precisely that stupid.
Says even more about the stupidity of those who get elected...
A move to proportional representation would eliminate gerrymandering
One way to make gerrymandering a lot harder would be not to record voters political affiliation on any public record. Simply changing the counting algorithm dosn't do much to address issues of lack of transparancy in the conduct of an election. Having votes "counted" in secret is a bad idea, having people closely connected to any of the candidates even touching ballots is an even worst idea.
Since the war on drugs has made drugs cheap, pure and ubiquitous, the war on terror is doing the same for terrorists, do you really want more politics?
One obvious question is if this positive feed back is intentional or not.
First, fix the OS. Make sure users know what is software and what is data, then restrict all of it by default.
Also so that the OS knows what is software and what is data. e.g. if an executable has been disguised as an AVI then the best thing to do is try (and probably fail) to play it as an AVI. As opposed to displaying a file with an icon indicating it is one type of file then when it is selected to be opened looking at whatever is actually in the file to decide how to open it. Effectivly Windows likes to play "bait and switch" with file types.
Assuming we actually have a "free market", if not time to stop pretending that we do.
They have a right to compete within the law and to stand or fall depending on whether they offer a service worth the artists's and consumers's money. They do not have a right to turn a profit.
The Moon hitting the Earth would very well knock it out of orbit, as well as punch a nice big hole in it if not cracking it in two like a soft-boiled egg. It's a neat Asteroid Impact Simulator, but it failed the sci-fi-what-if test.
Probably because it was using real science. As opposed to "Hollywood science". Real planets are a lot tougher than their fictional cousins.
Any colony on the moon would be under several meters of soil, for solar radiation shielding alone, but also just to help counteract the air pressure inside the colony. If you had 1 atm pressure in the colony then that would be 14 lbs(earth equiv) / square inch, of upward force on the roof. Thick plastic like a balloon would be verry expensive since you would have to bring it all from Earth. Probably you would try to balance the pressure. Less for less air pressure of course, but still a bunch. Maybe using a lava tube so you wouldn't have to excavate much. It would be interesting to figure the effect of a hit like this on a buried structure.
Actually you'd probably use 10-11 psi. Both for the base and whatever transported you to/from it. There's no good reason to use sea level pressurisation an "altitude" of 8-10,000 feet would be fine. Even 14 psi isn't going to take much in the way of structure to hold.
With no atmosphere on Moon, there is no heating up. No fireball. I would expect some rocks and dust to be thrown out from the impact crater, but no light.
Piezoluminescence does not require an atmosphere. There's also the possibility of an impact mixing components of the crust and the impact body which react emitting light.
Carter does not pull his punches about Gore's activism, "The man is an embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science"
Strangely enough this is from a website that is sporting anti-bush t-shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers
Why is this strange? Just because someone dosn't like one politican dosn't mean they must like another...
The examples in the article where just "artistic design", which can not ever work, at least not if implemented using the air interfaces that we usually attribute to the concept of "cell phones". They are more like what you get when artist try to make houses: they have a tendency to forget about some boring stuff like rain and wind...
Some actual architects do actually appear to fall in to this catagory. Especially if they are several steps removed from the people who will be expected to actually use the building.
Forgive my neo-Ludditism, but why does a cell phone have to be more than a phone? I say this as the owner of a Motorola V360, an excellent phone that also happens to have an MP3 player built in, which is one of the more useful accessories a phone could conceivably have, and saved me the trouble of buying another thing to tote around. I have a camera for pictures, but I wouldn't feel the need to set the phone down and display those pictures.
Also if phones are going to have GPS built in having the thing display lattitude and longitude wouldn't hurt.
lol. quite right. I implemented a mobile tracking utility for a breakdown service here in the UK (so when you called the call centre, they could figure out where you were even if you had no idea).
First thing that happened.. one woman did the location lookup 50 times... yup, her boyfriends' mobile.
Should such a call centre be able to locate the phone just be knowing the number? As opposed to only when a call is being made to them or for a short time afterwards.
The biggest issue with it though, it that the locations are not very accurate - good enough to see which section of motorway you're on, or which village you're in, but to determine exactly the location (like they find terrorists in 24) is fiction. The location is usually within a hundred to a thousand metres depending on the area (number of cells etc).
Which is a useful accuracy if you are trying to locate a stranded motorist.
In any case, tracking someone without their knowledge is illegal, you have to ask.
Whilst it might be illegal for a private individual, any employer, the AA/RAC, etc. It probably isn't if the police, GCHQ, MI5/6, etc decide to do it. There are issues such as how do you ensure that the police only track a phone which has been reported stolen, in the posession of a missing/abducted person, where there is a valid warrent in place, etc.
It's pretty easy to say bad things happen, but it's that kind of laissez faire attitude that gets kids in trouble in the first place. Yeah, bad things happen, but a lot of bad things are preventable.
The problem is that sometimes attempts to prevent "bad things" from happening actually make other "bad things" a lot more likely. It's even possible that the final result of badly though out actions is to make whatever they are intended to prevent more likely.
And it's not just educating your kid; it's making sure they have the tools they need to stay safe. And if that means planting a bug in their cell phone, so be it. If that gives me peace of mind and makes it possible for my kid to be found or get out of a jam they might not ordinarily be able to get out of, then it's worth it. My kids are too valueable to me to take chances.
You must be careful not to make them feel too safe. Since the result of that is that people tend to start taking foolish risks in order to get their feeling of risk back to the "right" level. N.B. this is a normal human behaviour...
Except the service will be linked to an RFID chip planted inside the pain center of the child's brain. Then, if they get further than 5 feet from their cellphone or roam outside the allowed area, a jolt of pain sensation can be sent directly through their body. Think of it as a giant invisible fence!
So where's this "pain chip" going to get it's power from? If it's from the phone then simply removing the battery will disable it. It also isn't going to be long before someone works out how to hack such a system into a weapon.
I'm sure the people at Verizon have thought about this a little longer than you give them credit for. For one, the parents will be able to call the cell phone when they want, and bust the kid if he's not there. Any sufficiently clever parent will call at least once to check up on the kid, or establish a precedent of making it likely. Second, Verizon can alert parents when the number is forwarded, or disable forwarding of the number. There's really no way around that without unbelievably serious hacking. And if my kid could do that, then I'd be happy to let him go to where ever the hell he wants to go!
So Verizon provide 100% coverage? Which should please the rest of their customers? Appartently "serious hacking" includes the off switch or removing the battery:)
1) Tell parent you are going to a friends house...
2) At friend's house, tie Cellphone to family dog (make 'em think you're actually there and moving around)
3) ???
4) Profit!!!
The profit would be for the kid who offers a paid for "phone minder" service.
I had older siblings to keep me in line, but there were a few times when I was home alone and could get into trouble (mix Dixie cups, water, and propane torches. "Question: Why won't the propane torch burn a hole in a paper cup filled with water?")
Actually it will if you have either a suitably small quantity of water or a suitably large quantity of propane. You need to first turn virtually all of the water into steam, which requires a lot of energy, until you do this the hottest the paper can get is the boiling point of water.
...then the resolution should be more than sufficient. (And before anyone cries that they would never do these sorts of things, they already do them. They just haven't gotten around to doing them to white US taxpayers. Yet.)
How would you know? Blackmail is most sucessful when it goes unreported. If the blackmailer is some shadowy arm of government or the police who are you going to report it to?
_That_ is the problem with such chilling effects. That they won't really even work against spies and terrorists (it's not like Al Quaeda members will form groups on Orkut or whatever,
Actually they might well do. Just fill them with disinformation, so that the cops will be off arresting innocent people when the real terrorists attack a target other than the one given on the blog.
Basically, the the most effective threats don't have to be explicit, but vague and implicit. People don't have to know that the government will swiftly come and send them to Guantanamo for speaking against it. The most effective threat is to just have everyone know that you know everything they did and everyone they associated with, that it's for ever attached to their file somewhere, and they don't know how or when you'll use it. Maybe you'll go for direct retaliation, or maybe their son won't be able to get a government scholarship/job/whatever because of what they said, or whatever. That unknown can pretty chilling while costing very little to maintain. (A lot less than trying to execute everyone who disaggrees, and creates less martyrs.)
It also helps keep the Stasi wages bill down, since you don't need to employ that many, especially when others will spread fear for you.
The USA used to have a different, better, system than what's there now. Amendment XII - Choosing the President, Vice-President changed the way the president and vice president are elected. Originally all candidates ran for president and after a process where the candidate with the lowest vote count was dropped until only two were left then the candidate with the highest count was president and the next vp.
Most likely the reason is that the way political parties operate has changed over time. Even though the US has always had two main political parties their current similarity and domination of all parts of government probably wasn't the case a couple of hundred years ago.
This is one of several voting systems that are alternatives to the USA's obsolete "first past the post" system that has been enhanced with a "winner takes all" electoral college. Most of the democratic world uses one of these other systems, it is time for US to do likewise.
Plenty of countries use "first past the post" electoral systems. There appear to be other factors at work which make things especially bad in the US, including attaching party membership to voter registration, different nomination rules for different candidates, lack of independence in those conducting elections, lack of transparancy in counting votes, etc.
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Funny thing is is that many of the companies aren't even US companies (Sony BMG, EMI, Universal etc.).
No doubt they'll claim to be "American" when they want the US Government to do something, but try any means possible to avoid paying taxes to the US Government.
I don't doubt that some people refrained from drinking, just as I don't doubt that the drug laws deter some people from using drugs. The problem is that the people who will be deterred will entirely consist of light to moderate users, i.e., the people who are the least part of the "problem" that you're trying to address.
Or if you prefer "users" rather than "abusers".
That's how prohibitions work, take an activity that is harmless to most people but detrimental to a few, restrict the freedom of those who aren't the problem, and heap endless amounts of negative social consequences on those who don't comply to "save them from themselves." Oh, and as a side benefit, expand police state powers while guaranteeing a generous revenue stream to organized crime.
For the latter any kind of prohibition is a "business opportunity"
A prohibition is also likely to alter the way the drug in question is supplied. From dilute (e.g. beer) to concentrated (e.g. spirits) at least partly because the logistics involved in transporting an illegal drug.
Think about alcohol Prohibition. Before and after Prohibition, a majority of adult Americans drank alcohol at least occasionally. (Perhaps even during it, though we'll never know.) Yet the idea was popular enough to get passed via constitutional amendment, requiring the approval of two thirds of both houses of Congress AND all the state legislatures. Not that it wasn't stupid, it was *so* stupid that 13 years later it became the only amendment ever repealed.
With a lot of the current "war on drugs" being little different from US alcohol prohibition.
Never underestimate the ability of the American electorate to be precisely that stupid.
Says even more about the stupidity of those who get elected...
A move to proportional representation would eliminate gerrymandering
One way to make gerrymandering a lot harder would be not to record voters political affiliation on any public record.
Simply changing the counting algorithm dosn't do much to address issues of lack of transparancy in the conduct of an election. Having votes "counted" in secret is a bad idea, having people closely connected to any of the candidates even touching ballots is an even worst idea.
So now Bush is just going to bomb/confiscate all the IKEA stores and SAAB dealerships?
:)
There might be some logic with the latter. Since SAAB also make warplanes.
It makes sense. The Viking raids and ABBA didn't work, so those evil Swedes are going to try to crush us with nice, cheap furniture and nifty cars.
Or even between two Volvos
Since the war on drugs has made drugs cheap, pure and ubiquitous, the war on terror is doing the same for terrorists, do you really want more politics?
One obvious question is if this positive feed back is intentional or not.
First, fix the OS. Make sure users know what is software and what is data, then restrict all of it by default.
Also so that the OS knows what is software and what is data. e.g. if an executable has been disguised as an AVI then the best thing to do is try (and probably fail) to play it as an AVI. As opposed to displaying a file with an icon indicating it is one type of file then when it is selected to be opened looking at whatever is actually in the file to decide how to open it.
Effectivly Windows likes to play "bait and switch" with file types.
No they do not. Nobody in a free market does.
Assuming we actually have a "free market", if not time to stop pretending that we do.
They have a right to compete within the law and to stand or fall depending on whether they offer a service worth the artists's and consumers's money. They do not have a right to turn a profit.
Or even to break even...
The Moon hitting the Earth would very well knock it out of orbit, as well as punch a nice big hole in it if not cracking it in two like a soft-boiled egg. It's a neat Asteroid Impact Simulator, but it failed the sci-fi-what-if test.
Probably because it was using real science. As opposed to "Hollywood science". Real planets are a lot tougher than their fictional cousins.
Any colony on the moon would be under several meters of soil, for solar radiation shielding alone, but also just to help counteract the air pressure inside the colony. If you had 1 atm pressure in the colony then that would be 14 lbs(earth equiv) / square inch, of upward force on the roof. Thick plastic like a balloon would be verry expensive since you would have to bring it all from Earth. Probably you would try to balance the pressure. Less for less air pressure of course, but still a bunch. Maybe using a lava tube so you wouldn't have to excavate much. It would be interesting to figure the effect of a hit like this on a buried structure.
Actually you'd probably use 10-11 psi. Both for the base and whatever transported you to/from it. There's no good reason to use sea level pressurisation an "altitude" of 8-10,000 feet would be fine.
Even 14 psi isn't going to take much in the way of structure to hold.
With no atmosphere on Moon, there is no heating up. No fireball. I would expect some rocks and dust to be thrown out from the impact crater, but no light.
Piezoluminescence does not require an atmosphere. There's also the possibility of an impact mixing components of the crust and the impact body which react emitting light.
Carter does not pull his punches about Gore's activism, "The man is an embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science"
Strangely enough this is from a website that is sporting anti-bush t-shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers
Why is this strange? Just because someone dosn't like one politican dosn't mean they must like another...
The examples in the article where just "artistic design", which can not ever work, at least not if implemented using the air interfaces that we usually attribute to the concept of "cell phones". They are more like what you get when artist try to make houses: they have a tendency to forget about some boring stuff like rain and wind...
Some actual architects do actually appear to fall in to this catagory. Especially if they are several steps removed from the people who will be expected to actually use the building.
Forgive my neo-Ludditism, but why does a cell phone have to be more than a phone? I say this as the owner of a Motorola V360, an excellent phone that also happens to have an MP3 player built in, which is one of the more useful accessories a phone could conceivably have, and saved me the trouble of buying another thing to tote around. I have a camera for pictures, but I wouldn't feel the need to set the phone down and display those pictures.
Also if phones are going to have GPS built in having the thing display lattitude and longitude wouldn't hurt.
lol. quite right. I implemented a mobile tracking utility for a breakdown service here in the UK (so when you called the call centre, they could figure out where you were even if you had no idea).
First thing that happened.. one woman did the location lookup 50 times... yup, her boyfriends' mobile.
Should such a call centre be able to locate the phone just be knowing the number? As opposed to only when a call is being made to them or for a short time afterwards.
The biggest issue with it though, it that the locations are not very accurate - good enough to see which section of motorway you're on, or which village you're in, but to determine exactly the location (like they find terrorists in 24) is fiction. The location is usually within a hundred to a thousand metres depending on the area (number of cells etc).
Which is a useful accuracy if you are trying to locate a stranded motorist.
In any case, tracking someone without their knowledge is illegal, you have to ask.
Whilst it might be illegal for a private individual, any employer, the AA/RAC, etc. It probably isn't if the police, GCHQ, MI5/6, etc decide to do it.
There are issues such as how do you ensure that the police only track a phone which has been reported stolen, in the posession of a missing/abducted person, where there is a valid warrent in place, etc.
It's pretty easy to say bad things happen, but it's that kind of laissez faire attitude that gets kids in trouble in the first place. Yeah, bad things happen, but a lot of bad things are preventable.
The problem is that sometimes attempts to prevent "bad things" from happening actually make other "bad things" a lot more likely. It's even possible that the final result of badly though out actions is to make whatever they are intended to prevent more likely.
And it's not just educating your kid; it's making sure they have the tools they need to stay safe. And if that means planting a bug in their cell phone, so be it. If that gives me peace of mind and makes it possible for my kid to be found or get out of a jam they might not ordinarily be able to get out of, then it's worth it. My kids are too valueable to me to take chances.
You must be careful not to make them feel too safe. Since the result of that is that people tend to start taking foolish risks in order to get their feeling of risk back to the "right" level. N.B. this is a normal human behaviour...
Except the service will be linked to an RFID chip planted inside the pain center of the child's brain. Then, if they get further than 5 feet from their cellphone or roam outside the allowed area, a jolt of pain sensation can be sent directly through their body. Think of it as a giant invisible fence!
So where's this "pain chip" going to get it's power from? If it's from the phone then simply removing the battery will disable it. It also isn't going to be long before someone works out how to hack such a system into a weapon.
I'm sure the people at Verizon have thought about this a little longer than you give them credit for. For one, the parents will be able to call the cell phone when they want, and bust the kid if he's not there. Any sufficiently clever parent will call at least once to check up on the kid, or establish a precedent of making it likely. Second, Verizon can alert parents when the number is forwarded, or disable forwarding of the number. There's really no way around that without unbelievably serious hacking. And if my kid could do that, then I'd be happy to let him go to where ever the hell he wants to go!
:)
So Verizon provide 100% coverage? Which should please the rest of their customers?
Appartently "serious hacking" includes the off switch or removing the battery
1) Tell parent you are going to a friends house...
2) At friend's house, tie Cellphone to family dog (make 'em think you're actually there and moving around)
3) ???
4) Profit!!!
The profit would be for the kid who offers a paid for "phone minder" service.
I had older siblings to keep me in line, but there were a few times when I was home alone and could get into trouble (mix Dixie cups, water, and propane torches. "Question: Why won't the propane torch burn a hole in a paper cup filled with water?")
Actually it will if you have either a suitably small quantity of water or a suitably large quantity of propane. You need to first turn virtually all of the water into steam, which requires a lot of energy, until you do this the hottest the paper can get is the boiling point of water.
...then the resolution should be more than sufficient. (And before anyone cries that they would never do these sorts of things, they already do them. They just haven't gotten around to doing them to white US taxpayers. Yet.)
How would you know? Blackmail is most sucessful when it goes unreported. If the blackmailer is some shadowy arm of government or the police who are you going to report it to?
_That_ is the problem with such chilling effects. That they won't really even work against spies and terrorists (it's not like Al Quaeda members will form groups on Orkut or whatever,
Actually they might well do. Just fill them with disinformation, so that the cops will be off arresting innocent people when the real terrorists attack a target other than the one given on the blog.
Basically, the the most effective threats don't have to be explicit, but vague and implicit. People don't have to know that the government will swiftly come and send them to Guantanamo for speaking against it. The most effective threat is to just have everyone know that you know everything they did and everyone they associated with, that it's for ever attached to their file somewhere, and they don't know how or when you'll use it. Maybe you'll go for direct retaliation, or maybe their son won't be able to get a government scholarship/job/whatever because of what they said, or whatever. That unknown can pretty chilling while costing very little to maintain. (A lot less than trying to execute everyone who disaggrees, and creates less martyrs.)
It also helps keep the Stasi wages bill down, since you don't need to employ that many, especially when others will spread fear for you.
The USA used to have a different, better, system than what's there now. Amendment XII - Choosing the President, Vice-President changed the way the president and vice president are elected. Originally all candidates ran for president and after a process where the candidate with the lowest vote count was dropped until only two were left then the candidate with the highest count was president and the next vp.
Most likely the reason is that the way political parties operate has changed over time. Even though the US has always had two main political parties their current similarity and domination of all parts of government probably wasn't the case a couple of hundred years ago.
This is one of several voting systems that are alternatives to the USA's obsolete "first past the post" system that has been enhanced with a "winner takes all" electoral college. Most of the democratic world uses one of these other systems, it is time for US to do likewise.
Plenty of countries use "first past the post" electoral systems. There appear to be other factors at work which make things especially bad in the US, including attaching party membership to voter registration, different nomination rules for different candidates, lack of independence in those conducting elections, lack of transparancy in counting votes, etc.