Enduring archival of public documents is, likewise, important for any society that wishes to learn from history instead of repeating the same mistakes.
Governments often need to hold on to information for a long time. Quite often longer than a human lifetime.
National security issues of knowing exactly what it is you are running. This is one issue that largely continues beneath the surface. It's very surprising to me that in the post 9/11 world that more hasn't been made of critical infrastructure running only programs you can see for yourself and compile for yourself.
Sane governments do not put things critial for their own operation in the hands of foreign nationals. Even the nationals of close allies.
HP is widely recognized as having a quality printing division just because this model allows them to "support" their product by ensuring parts are replaced as needed. Instead of making a disposable printer like most other brands, they took the part that breaks the most and made it disposable. When you replace the cartridge (and head), your printer is being "refurbished" in a way to keep producing quality.
However this creates a new point of possible failure, the contacts on the print cartridge carrier. You also have complications with needing to compensate for slightly different alignment of the printhead each time it is changed.
Most ink cartridges today have print heads on them already, which is a big part of their cost.
Depends who makes the printer. The likes of Epson have print heads as a completly separate unit from the ink cartridge. (The latter simply being a plastic bottle of ink, possibly also containing a sponge.)
The DUL is not a blacklist in the sense that all mail from the listed IPs is refused. The DUL is used to refuse direct mail from those IPs, but mail relayed through another server is allowed. This prevents someone on a dynamic IP from spamming by directly connecting to the SMTP server of each target address, instead of sending all the mail through an open relay. Legitimate customers simply need to use their ISP's (or a 3rd party) SMTP relay (which presumably has message speed limits on it) to send mail, and it will go through.
Third party relaying wasn't even in the original SMTP spec. Even though it is now mentioned there is no requirment for any MTA to support either using or acting as a third party relay at all.
Yes, this prevents someone from running their own SMTP relay on a dynamic IP,
It dosn't need to be any kind of relay, a mail originator which conforms 100% with thre relevent RFCs will also be given problems.
but it's the only effective way of preventing such direct-to-target-server spam from going through.
Given the chance most spammers would use a third party relay, including an ISP provided one. Since this protects their identity and their machine. Indeed techniques such as Telegrube are easily defeated by using a third party relay.
Well, the "winner take all" system of election we use makes it very difficult for new parties to make inroads. Whichever individual candidate gets the most votes wins the seat, end of discussion - there's very little motivation to be in a small party, because you can't muster the resources to capture the majority vote for a given seat, and will likely never hold an office.
When did the US cease to have elected state and local government?
In political systems where each party gets a number of seats equal to its percentage of votes, there are generally quite a few political parties.
This dosn't explain why contries which have similar electoral rules, e.g. the UK, have a different political landscape. Whilst some kind of PR system may help political diversity it certainly isn't all which is involved.
Imagine that there are 5 political parties, two liberal, two conservative, and "The Sell Everything to A Major Corporation Party (SEMC)". Now, the first four parties, being relatively rational political entities, garner the majority of the votes...about 98%, evenly divided. The last 2% is taken by SEMC. Now, any time a borderline issue comes up where the major parties come up close to even on a vote, guess who decides - that's right, that tiny little 2% party.
Only if you assume that the SEMC party is "centralist" and every issue can be simply be divided along "liberal" and "conservative".
When did you take the last econ class? Don't you realize that if they pay out dividends there will be still the same amount of money in the system, i.e., the same amount of money available for loans. If they payout dividends, the money just goes from one account to another. Nothing changes for the BANK!
Only if all the people involved happen to use the same bank. The money might wind up in different banks, or being spent.
Peru giving the first world a lesson in democratic principles. Should be required reading for every candidate at every level in US politics
I'm not sure how it will directly help the US. Where the two biggest problems are a lack of political parties (are there any elected officials who are not members of either the Democratic or Republican parties?) and massive lobbying by corporate interests.
If the content industry wins this one against Sonic Blue, what's next? Will some astute judge order webcams installed in our homes to make sure we don't skip out to the bathroom during the commercials? Will our telephones have embedded anti-content-theft software that deactivates them during commercials, lest our attention be illegally diverted by conversation with real humans?
Maybe billboards will have cameras to track people not looking at them. There will be fines for not reading junk mail (probably email spam too). If anything this is further proof that the US is not a capitalist country. If it was then anyone making such claim would be considered a fool. With this kind of court case being laughed out of court (by the judge/B).
The retarded part of the whole thing is the TV networks conception that not watching commercials is somehow evil.
What they are missing is that all advertising is simply a kind of gambling. What next, postal spam companies want people who throw away their material unread (and possibly unopened) fined?
They don't get money from me watching a McDonalds commercial (even though that is how they charge advertisers), they get money from me buying a Big Mac and a Coke.
Actually the TV companies get money from McDonalds trying to persuade people to buy Big Macs and Cokes.
The only reason they're going after PVRs is because they fuck up their audience statistics. If a show has a specific rating they can assume a certain number of people are watching and charge advertisers accordingly. All an advertisers has to do in negotiations is whip out a paper that says there are a million ReplayTV and not have to pay the netwok as much money as they are charging.
However ReplayTV and the people using the hardware they sell are not party to any of the negotiations broadcasters and their advertisers enguage in. It simply isn't (nor should be) anyone else's problem. Not ReplayTV's, not their customers and certainly not government or the general public.
The process is called discovery and it's clearly a good thing. It's also important to remember that this is not a crimnal case, it's civil. Many rights don't apply to civil cases, because you can't go to jail.
Except that "discovery" typically does not involve the court telling either defendant or plaintiff to spy on third parties. Unless all of ReplayTV's *customers* have now become parties to the case. If so the judge might need to move the next hearing to a sports stadium and be prepared for a very long hearing...
Apparently, a lot of police cars and other emergency vehicles have been ticketed while they were speeding to answer 911 calls.
I suppose this is just about possible with unmarked police cars. But regular emergency vehicles are brighly painted and have flashing lights on top.
Although human oversight is supposed to screen out these citations, a lot of cops, firefighters and EMTs found themselves receiving tickets in the line of duty, and the city's appeal process was so complex they couldn't go through the effort to fight them off.
Don't the tickets generally go to the registered owner...
To make the roads safer, we need to improve driving standards: make the test harder, and retest drivers periodically.
You also need tougher penalties. e.g. first time DUI lose licence for a period of time and don't get it back until passing a retest. Second time permenant loss of licence. Driving without a licence confiscation of vehicle and jail...
Well, the increase in rear-end accidents seems to indicate that people are speeding/tailgating. When I stand on my ABS brakes, and you are following me, you are supposed to be far enough back that you don't hit me (which is a function of speed of course.)
Problem is that often better brakes are treated as a "performance" rather than a safety enhancement.
Of course the camera isn't as good as a cop. Does the camera cost $50k-$100k a year to operate? Does the camera get overtime? I don't think so.
Are cameras the best way to increase safety. Alternatives would include changing the timing of lights or different road markings and signs.
As a matter of fact, the statistics showed that red light cameras actually INCREASED the number of rear-end accidents by as much as 700+ percent in some areas
If someone drives into the back of another car then generally the onus is on them to demonstrate that they wern't to blame. Most likely they were driving too fast or too close.
First off, IAAAE - I am an Aero Engineer. Glide ratio is largely a function of the wing's efficiency - and that is almost entirely a function of the ratio of wingspan to wing "chord" - in otherwords, the ratio of width to length of the wing. (Ever wonder why a sailplane has such long thin wings?)
One thing ground effect does is to increase the effective length of the wing. So as long as the craft stays in ground effect it's glide ratio is larger than you'd otherwise expect it to be. Most likely a WIG will glide rather further than people (especially those familiar with more conventional aircraft) would expect.
One other interesting fact about these things is worth mentioning. If you see the pics of the Russian monster WIG (sometimes called the "Caspian Sea Monster", due to its extreme size), you'll notice the engines at the FRONT, up high on a winglike structure. Why? Well, to get "airborne", you have to get up to speed. But water drag is so high, and the plane is so big, that they cannot simply accelerate up to flying speed. So the only way to get enough air under the wings to get out of the water is to blow it directly there - so they mount the engines in front of the wing, so that the airstream can be directed under the wing to boost the plane off the water at a relatively low speed
I'm not sure KM actually works this way. It looks more as though the Russians simply followed the "brute force" school of engineering. With the engines being up high to avoid ingesting water.
Ad tracking is flawed on so many levels. Magazines, billboards, etc have no way of knowing the true demographic of people viewing the ads.
Unless the ad requires people to contact someone in response. In which case different ads can have different addresses, telephone numbers, URLs or email addresses. Or even promoting using some kind of money off cupon. But that dosn't tell you if people would have bought it at the regular price.
Actually "tyranny" has a very specific meaning. It's where someone who isn't royalty takes on the role of a monarch. As with other types of dicatorship even if the initial government is sound things tend to fall apart with any sucessors to the original ruler.
Yes, they are gathering statistics. And no, they don't care about you. Having said that, your information is VALUABLE.
Actually in the case of the so called "Neilsen ratings" in the US, the statistics probably arn't that valuable. Indeed they are probably rather valueless. For the simple reason that the broadcasters know when they are likely to be monitored and thus change their output.
but low-level flight over water? What's the trouble with good old boats?
WIGs are a lot faster than boats. Very useful if you are shipping perishable cargo. Or how about transporting passengers or livestock, where you also need to carry food and water for the journey?
I suspect that the primary use for this is simply to set new records - The Worlds Fastest Ground Effect Vehicle and the like. Commercially... well, I don't know about you, but as someone who enjoys spending time on the open water, I don't know if I want a bunch of pseudo-aircraft zipping all over the place - the water is an inherently "slow" transportation medium,
If water is inherently for slow transportation then why do ships like the Stenna Discovery exist. Let alone such things as powerboat racing?
One of the problems of winged vehicles is the effect of catestrophic propulsion failure. In a train or a truck if your engine fails you stop moving but the cargo is still in tact. In a winged vehicle a power failure will result in a loss of cargo, if not at the bottom of the ocean then almost certainly all over the surface of it.
In a conventional aircraft this is the case. With a WIG craft so long as the flight controls work (if needs be from an APU or RAT) it can easily be landed. Though it will most likely be capable of gliding considerable distance with no engine power.
You can "jump" stuff by pitching up sharply, but, like all aircraft, you'll lose airspeed quickly.
Which is in itself bad. But also you'd then need to get from an altitude where the craft can't fly well to one where it can slowly and smoothly. Pitching down sharply would be a very bad idea...
There's a book (fiction, pulp) called "Deep Lie" in which the russians had (among other fun things) a fleet of stealth WIG planes. At the time of reading that, last summer, i thought it was just nifty science fiction. Seems i was wrong:)
They can be quite stealthy, especially if you have some kind of "pathfinder" aircraft so that the ekranoplans don't need to use their own radar. Unfortunatly the pathfinder plane then is a very obvious target.
What i don't see is why a WIG plane couldn't be adapted for ground use.
The ground needs to be smooth, otherwise you are in trouble if the flight controls can't operate fast enough. (Or if the topography from a radar POV does not correspond with the topography from an aerodynamic POV. Thus the autopilot is incapable of compensating anyway.)
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Enduring archival of public documents is, likewise, important for any society that wishes to learn from history instead of repeating the same mistakes.
Governments often need to hold on to information for a long time. Quite often longer than a human lifetime.
National security issues of knowing exactly what it is you are running. This is one issue that largely continues beneath the surface. It's very surprising to me that in the post 9/11 world that more hasn't been made of critical infrastructure running only programs you can see for yourself and compile for yourself.
Sane governments do not put things critial for their own operation in the hands of foreign nationals. Even the nationals of close allies.
HP is widely recognized as having a quality printing division just because this model allows them to "support" their product by ensuring parts are replaced as needed. Instead of making a disposable printer like most other brands, they took the part that breaks the most and made it disposable. When you replace the cartridge (and head), your printer is being "refurbished" in a way to keep producing quality.
However this creates a new point of possible failure, the contacts on the print cartridge carrier. You also have complications with needing to compensate for slightly different alignment of the printhead each time it is changed.
Some cars even require "proprietary" fuel (i.e. race cars because they are specifically designed to perform with a very high-octane fuel).
Which race cars might this be? FIA (the governing body of Formula 1) changed the regulations several years ago to require regular road fuel.
Most ink cartridges today have print heads on them already, which is a big part of their cost.
Depends who makes the printer. The likes of Epson have print heads as a completly separate unit from the ink cartridge. (The latter simply being a plastic bottle of ink, possibly also containing a sponge.)
The DUL is not a blacklist in the sense that all mail from the listed IPs is refused. The DUL is used to refuse direct mail from those IPs, but mail relayed through another server is allowed. This prevents someone on a dynamic IP from spamming by directly connecting to the SMTP server of each target address, instead of sending all the mail through an open relay. Legitimate customers simply need to use their ISP's (or a 3rd party) SMTP relay (which presumably has message speed limits on it) to send mail, and it will go through.
Third party relaying wasn't even in the original SMTP spec. Even though it is now mentioned there is no requirment for any MTA to support either using or acting as a third party relay at all.
Yes, this prevents someone from running their own SMTP relay on a dynamic IP,
It dosn't need to be any kind of relay, a mail originator which conforms 100% with thre relevent RFCs will also be given problems.
but it's the only effective way of preventing such direct-to-target-server spam from going through.
Given the chance most spammers would use a third party relay, including an ISP provided one. Since this protects their identity and their machine. Indeed techniques such as Telegrube are easily defeated by using a third party relay.
Well, the "winner take all" system of election we use makes it very difficult for new parties to make inroads. Whichever individual candidate gets the most votes wins the seat, end of discussion - there's very little motivation to be in a small party, because you can't muster the resources to capture the majority vote for a given seat, and will likely never hold an office.
When did the US cease to have elected state and local government?
In political systems where each party gets a number of seats equal to its percentage of votes, there are generally quite a few political parties.
This dosn't explain why contries which have similar electoral rules, e.g. the UK, have a different political landscape. Whilst some kind of PR system may help political diversity it certainly isn't all which is involved.
Imagine that there are 5 political parties, two liberal, two conservative, and "The Sell Everything to A Major Corporation Party (SEMC)". Now, the first four parties, being relatively rational political entities, garner the majority of the votes...about 98%, evenly divided. The last 2% is taken by SEMC. Now, any time a borderline issue comes up where the major parties come up close to even on a vote, guess who decides - that's right, that tiny little 2% party.
Only if you assume that the SEMC party is "centralist" and every issue can be simply be divided along "liberal" and "conservative".
When did you take the last econ class? Don't you realize that if they pay out dividends there will be still the same amount of money in the system, i.e., the same amount of money available for loans. If they payout dividends, the money just goes from one account to another. Nothing changes for the BANK!
Only if all the people involved happen to use the same bank. The money might wind up in different banks, or being spent.
Peru giving the first world a lesson in democratic principles. Should be required reading for every candidate at every level in US politics
I'm not sure how it will directly help the US. Where the two biggest problems are a lack of political parties (are there any elected officials who are not members of either the Democratic or Republican parties?) and massive lobbying by corporate interests.
If the content industry wins this one against Sonic Blue, what's next? Will some astute judge order webcams installed in our homes to make sure we don't skip out to the bathroom during the commercials? Will our telephones have embedded anti-content-theft software that deactivates them during commercials, lest our attention be illegally diverted by conversation with real humans?
Maybe billboards will have cameras to track people not looking at them. There will be fines for not reading junk mail (probably email spam too).
If anything this is further proof that the US is not a capitalist country. If it was then anyone making such claim would be considered a fool. With this kind of court case being laughed out of court (by the judge/B).
The retarded part of the whole thing is the TV networks conception that not watching commercials is somehow evil.
What they are missing is that all advertising is simply a kind of gambling. What next, postal spam companies want people who throw away their material unread (and possibly unopened) fined?
They don't get money from me watching a McDonalds commercial (even though that is how they charge advertisers), they get money from me buying a Big Mac and a Coke.
Actually the TV companies get money from McDonalds trying to persuade people to buy Big Macs and Cokes.
The only reason they're going after PVRs is because they fuck up their audience statistics. If a show has a specific rating they can assume a certain number of people are watching and charge advertisers accordingly. All an advertisers has to do in negotiations is whip out a paper that says there are a million ReplayTV and not have to pay the netwok as much money as they are charging.
However ReplayTV and the people using the hardware they sell are not party to any of the negotiations broadcasters and their advertisers enguage in. It simply isn't (nor should be) anyone else's problem. Not ReplayTV's, not their customers and certainly not government or the general public.
The Fifth Amendment clause preventing self-incrimination applies to individuals, not to organizations or corporations.
Wasn't it using the 5th ammendment which got US corporations declared to be "legal people" in the first place?
The process is called discovery and it's clearly a good thing. It's also important to remember that this is not a crimnal case, it's civil. Many rights don't apply to civil cases, because you can't go to jail.
Except that "discovery" typically does not involve the court telling either defendant or plaintiff to spy on third parties. Unless all of ReplayTV's *customers* have now become parties to the case. If so the judge might need to move the next hearing to a sports stadium and be prepared for a very long hearing...
Instead of making a case of their own, the "content-industry" has conveniently gotten the judge to order the other party to make their case for them.
There is also the irony of gathering data on alleged copyright infringment by using actual copyright infringment.
Apparently, a lot of police cars and other emergency vehicles have been ticketed while they were speeding to answer 911 calls.
I suppose this is just about possible with unmarked police cars. But regular emergency vehicles are brighly painted and have flashing lights on top.
Although human oversight is supposed to screen out these citations, a lot of cops, firefighters and EMTs found themselves receiving tickets in the line of duty, and the city's appeal process was so complex they couldn't go through the effort to fight them off.
Don't the tickets generally go to the registered owner...
To make the roads safer, we need to improve driving standards: make the test harder, and retest drivers periodically.
You also need tougher penalties. e.g. first time DUI lose licence for a period of time and don't get it back until passing a retest. Second time permenant loss of licence. Driving without a licence confiscation of vehicle and jail...
Well, the increase in rear-end accidents seems to indicate that people are speeding/tailgating. When I stand on my ABS brakes, and you are following me, you are supposed to be far enough back that you don't hit me (which is a function of speed of course.)
Problem is that often better brakes are treated as a "performance" rather than a safety enhancement.
Of course the camera isn't as good as a cop. Does the camera cost $50k-$100k a year to operate? Does the camera get overtime? I don't think so.
Are cameras the best way to increase safety. Alternatives would include changing the timing of lights or different road markings and signs.
As a matter of fact, the statistics showed that red light cameras actually INCREASED the number of rear-end accidents by as much as 700+ percent in some areas
If someone drives into the back of another car then generally the onus is on them to demonstrate that they wern't to blame. Most likely they were driving too fast or too close.
First off, IAAAE - I am an Aero Engineer. Glide ratio is largely a function of the wing's efficiency - and that is almost entirely a function of the ratio of wingspan to wing "chord" - in otherwords, the ratio of width to length of the wing. (Ever wonder why a sailplane has such long thin wings?)
One thing ground effect does is to increase the effective length of the wing. So as long as the craft stays in ground effect it's glide ratio is larger than you'd otherwise expect it to be. Most likely a WIG will glide rather further than people (especially those familiar with more conventional aircraft) would expect.
One other interesting fact about these things is worth mentioning. If you see the pics of the Russian monster WIG (sometimes called the "Caspian Sea Monster", due to its extreme size), you'll notice the engines at the FRONT, up high on a winglike structure. Why? Well, to get "airborne", you have to get up to speed. But water drag is so high, and the plane is so big, that they cannot simply accelerate up to flying speed. So the only way to get enough air under the wings to get out of the water is to blow it directly there - so they mount the engines in front of the wing, so that the airstream can be directed under the wing to boost the plane off the water at a relatively low speed
I'm not sure KM actually works this way. It looks more as though the Russians simply followed the "brute force" school of engineering. With the engines being up high to avoid ingesting water.
Ad tracking is flawed on so many levels. Magazines, billboards, etc have no way of knowing the true demographic of people viewing the ads.
Unless the ad requires people to contact someone in response. In which case different ads can have different addresses, telephone numbers, URLs or email addresses. Or even promoting using some kind of money off cupon. But that dosn't tell you if people would have bought it at the regular price.
A tyranny is an unjust form of government.
Actually "tyranny" has a very specific meaning. It's where someone who isn't royalty takes on the role of a monarch. As with other types of dicatorship even if the initial government is sound things tend to fall apart with any sucessors to the original ruler.
Yes, they are gathering statistics. And no, they don't care about you. Having said that, your information is VALUABLE.
Actually in the case of the so called "Neilsen ratings" in the US, the statistics probably arn't that valuable. Indeed they are probably rather valueless. For the simple reason that the broadcasters know when they are likely to be monitored and thus change their output.
but low-level flight over water? What's the trouble with good old boats?
WIGs are a lot faster than boats. Very useful if you are shipping perishable cargo. Or how about transporting passengers or livestock, where you also need to carry food and water for the journey?
I suspect that the primary use for this is simply to set new records - The Worlds Fastest Ground Effect Vehicle and the like. Commercially... well, I don't know about you, but as someone who enjoys spending time on the open water, I don't know if I want a bunch of pseudo-aircraft zipping all over the place - the water is an inherently "slow" transportation medium,
If water is inherently for slow transportation then why do ships like the Stenna Discovery exist. Let alone such things as powerboat racing?
One of the problems of winged vehicles is the effect of catestrophic propulsion failure. In a train or a truck if your engine fails you stop moving but the cargo is still in tact. In a winged vehicle a power failure will result in a loss of cargo, if not at the bottom of the ocean then almost certainly all over the surface of it.
In a conventional aircraft this is the case. With a WIG craft so long as the flight controls work (if needs be from an APU or RAT) it can easily be landed. Though it will most likely be capable of gliding considerable distance with no engine power.
You can "jump" stuff by pitching up sharply, but, like all aircraft, you'll lose airspeed quickly.
Which is in itself bad. But also you'd then need to get from an altitude where the craft can't fly well to one where it can slowly and smoothly. Pitching down sharply would be a very bad idea...
There's a book (fiction, pulp) called "Deep Lie" in which the russians had (among other fun things) a fleet of stealth WIG planes. At the time of reading that, last summer, i thought it was just nifty science fiction. Seems i was wrong :)
They can be quite stealthy, especially if you have some kind of "pathfinder" aircraft so that the ekranoplans don't need to use their own radar. Unfortunatly the pathfinder plane then is a very obvious target.
What i don't see is why a WIG plane couldn't be adapted for ground use.
The ground needs to be smooth, otherwise you are in trouble if the flight controls can't operate fast enough. (Or if the topography from a radar POV does not correspond with the topography from an aerodynamic POV. Thus the autopilot is incapable of compensating anyway.)