"You see, MY sources are actual OWNERS of the telephone company."
And I spent all too much time late last year pouring over the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
In the United States, there are "Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers" (ILECs) and "Competitive Local Exchange Carriers" (CLECs). The ILECs are the "Baby Bells" that everybody knows and loves. They're called "Baby Bells" because they are what's left after the Bell Telephone Coorporation was forcibly broken up by the federal courts a few decades ago. They were broken up by anti-trust laws because they had a monopoly on local telephone service in the United States.
Instead of being broken up into competing interests (like AT&T), instead they were broken up into regional monopolies (called ILECs), each having a monopoly in a number of states but none of them allowed to operate outside their designated regions. SBC is one of those companies.
Around 1996, in an effort to deal with the problems of these little monopolies, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed, which brought about the concept of CLECs. The Act allows competing phone service providers to offer service to customers. In order to do that, the Act requires the ILECs to lease the use of their hardware to these competing interests (terms to be dictated by federal and state governments).
While the CLECs may be competing with the Baby Bells in offering services, they do it by leasing Baby Bell hardware. This introduces conflicts of interest, where the Baby Bell is required to maintain leased equipment for the competing CLECs. This is why it can be so difficult to get things straightened out if you have a problem with DSL service: The CLEC and the ILEC spend a few days blaming each other for the service problems before anything starts to get done.
So it doesn't matter worth a damn what your "sources" say. They may own the company, but unless the company is named "SBC," the most they can say is that they lease the wires. SBC still ultimately owns them.
If you can't get DSL service from your local Baby Bell, you can't get DSL from anybody. You're only able to get DSL service from a competing provider because your local Baby Bell decided to upgrade the local switches, which your provider in turn leased from them. The bill talked about in this article would have allowed SBC to not lease their DSL equipment.
"You people bitch and moan about wanting cheap broadband, but when SBC comes in and says "we want to build a network without threats that you'll force us to subsidize the competition", everyone screams "MONOPOLY!!!""
And do you know why we require them to subsidize competition? Because they own all the phone lines! Period! It doesn't matter who your local or long-distance telephone provider is, every single call into, out of, or within the entire state of Kansas is on SBC wires. We call them (and all the other Baby Bells, like Verizon and Bellsouth and such) a monopoly because that is exactly what they are, complete with a government mandate to do so.
"Cable is the ONLY way to get it in many areas."
Another government-mandated monopoly.
Personally, I'm beginning to think the only solution to the Baby Bell and CATV provider problem is to take away the physical wires and give them to the state proper. These services are essentially a requirement in this day and age, they got to run their wiring through eminent domain to begin with, so why not take away their wires and let them just be service providers just like everybody else? Anything else is a conflict of interest.
"causing enough heat to get the warhead in the ICBM going,"
The only way to get the kind of heat needed to set off a thermonuclear (fusion) device is from a nuclear (fission) device.
Heat has nothing to do with setting off a nuclear (fission) device, at least in this day and age. Most of them use an implosion-explosion set-up, where a series of plastic explosives explode around a mass of fissionable material, compressing it down to critical density. The timing of the explosions is also pretty tricky.
Heat has nothing to do with setting off plastic explosives. Most plastic explosives are set off by compression, usually triggered by small blasting caps.
And, when all is said and done, if atmospheric re-entry were enough to set off an H-bomb, it would trigger the explosion hundreds of miles up. It would be a pretty fireworks show that screws up radio reception and throws circuit breakers, but that's about it.
"You on the other hand have been watching to many american films... It is practicly impossible to do anything with an ICBM (or a whole bunch of them) against an asteroid."
Use a series of them to nudge it out of the way, ala Project Orion.
In terms of bloodshed and carnage, comparing the Franco-Prussian War to the American Civil War is like comparing the Gulf War to WWII. Heck, I'm willing to bet the folks at Cherbourg saw more of the American Civil War than the Franco-Prussian War.
The important lesson of World War II is that it's OK to slaughter your own civillians but not those of your neighbor. If it weren't for Poland, would the war in Europe really have happened?
"Are you and that other [slashdot.org] wise crack telling me with straight faces that the world would have been a burning ball of fire, and that millions of lives would have been lost if those two bombs weren't dropped?"
Hrm, let's see...
Ignoring the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) that would have died (mostly on the Japanese side) in a conventional invasion of Honshu, Japan still had a stranglehold on much of the Asian mainland, stretching from Pyongyang to Singapore (and beyond) in 1945. Japan's soldiers had a warped sense of bushido and sense of ethnic superiority that caused them to perform acts of genocide that rivaled (if not surpassed) what Hitler and Stalin are known for doing. If the war would be allowed to grind on for another year or two, millions more would have died.
Just before the second atomic bomb, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. Aside from the usual "slant-eyes"/"gaijin" dehumanizing tendancies of both Japanese and Western cultures, the Soviets were fresh from a very bloody war in their western republics and Russia still remembered their stinging defeat in the Ruso-Japanese War (by a bunch of "slant-eyes"). If the Soviets and the Japanese were to be given the opportunity to shoot at each other in a long, protracted campaign, no quarter would have been asked for or given (making the Great Patriotic War seem downright civil by comparison). Millions would have died.
So, do I really think that if the war in the Pacific were not brought to a rapid conclusion by the two atomic bombs, millions more would have died? Yes.
Man, the historical accuracy of your posts just keeps going downhill...
"Not a single millitary outpost with it's contingency."
Off the top of my head, I can't remember the signifigance of Hiroshima, but Nagasaki was on the list of potential targets because of its port facilities.
" And don't forget, Pearl harbour was a millitary outpost,"
On US territory.
"if Uncle Sam wants to put his soldiers around the globe, he will have to face the risks of doing so..."
Uncle Sam wouldn't have had to worry if Uncle Sam would have continued exports to Japan that were fueling Japan's nine-year-old (at the time) war of aggression and expansion on the Asian mainland.
"Pearl Harbour, if anything was a major strategic win for Japan, nothing more, nothing less."
They were a major strategic loss, a minor tactical victory at best. There were no carriers at anchor at Pearl, which were Yamamoto's primary target. He played his only trump card and gained next to nothing because of it.
"That last statement is, of course, if we all play nice, and really believe the US was *completely unaware* of the impending attack (which I believe is bullshit)"
You are right only to a degree, only in the tactical sense.
Even the US public was well aware of Japanese intentions towards the US. Those on Oahu and the Philippines that day were taken by surprise by the attacks themselves, not the ones attacking them. Operation Barbarossa was far more of a surprise than 12/7/41.
"Do you *really* think the US was unaware of the actions of Bin Laden?"
The US wasn't in the middle of diplomatic negotiations with either bin Laden or Mullah Omar's government in September 2001. Afghanistan was only butchering its own civillians, and had yet to even consider invading one of its neighbors. Tojo's Japan had already slaughtered many, many more civillians for a longer period of time by 1941 than bin Laden could possibly hope to achieve, even after 2001.
"Your argument would have been acceptable if Japan was still bombarding San Fransisco at the time, and the US was having heavy casualties."
San Francisco? No. But the Japanese still held on to the Asian mainland and was massacring Chinese civillians (like they'd been doing since 1932) essentially right on up until Hirohito set foot aboard the USS Missouiri.
But people who are stuck with a Eurocentric viewpoint on history tend not to know that.
"As soon as the germans capitulated, Russia was on Japan's ass, and they were scared of it."
Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. If you knew your history, you'd know that, after being essentially blockaded and slowly starved by the US submarine force for the better part of a year, after being nuked twice, after the Soviets declared war on Japan and the sudden influx of bloodthirsty eastern-front veterans, Hideki Tojo's army was so "scared" that they staged a desparate coup to prevent the emperor from surrendering!
If the coup had been successful, it would have taken more than just two nuclear devices to convince them to surrender. Probably far more.
" What I can *guarantee* you without any ambiguity is that the second bomb was definitely *not* necessary."
I disagree, for the reasons stated above.
If you can find it, there's a flick out there named Hiroshima that examines the final months of the war in the Pacific from both the US and Japanese sides. It feels a lot like Tora! Tora! Tora! You'll see just how "scared" and "willing to surrender" the Japanese military was. It airs on Showtime from time to time.
"And it achieved exactly what it had started out to do: begin the cold war."
The Cold War was "starting" after WWII no matter what happened to Japan. It's roots come from well before 1945 (even before 1938). The only thing that the use of the atomic bombs on Japan did was make sure that the Soviets weren't able to carve up Japan like they did to Germany and (eventually) Korea.
"The US dropping that bomb completely undermined Russia's crucial role in the war... etc. etc"
What role? The Soviet Union had a non-aggression pact with Japan until August 1945. They didn't declare war on Japan until two days after the Hiroshima bombing, the day before Nagasaki. Japan had nothing to do with the Great Patriotic War.
"Actually, junk mail is sent at bulk mailing rates so low that in fact it costs the post office money, which they then pass on in the form of 1st class mail stamps."
Spoken like someone who has zero experience with bulk mailing.
"Bulk mail" is cheaper for the simple reason that it is a labor-sharing program between the USPS and the mailier. The mailer pre-sorts their mail (hence the official name "presorted mail") by region before handing it off to the post office. The finer the level of sortation, the less the mailer pays in postage. A mailer that goes so far as to sort down to the carrier route (putting the pieces in the tray in the order the delivery person goes down the streets) pays considerably less than mailers that sort just by three-digit zone. This is sorting that the USPS itself doesn't have to pay for, hence the smaller postage.
And on top of that, the mailer can elect to drop the mail into the mailstream closer to the delivery point. Mailers pay less if they're willing to drop the mail off in the destination zone themselves, and they even have the option of dropping the presorted mail off at the destination post office.
The price of first class mail versus standard mail doesn't subsidize standard mail, it pays for services that don't come with standard mail. Services like "forward to the recipient's new address," "return to sender" and the like. This is why putting "return to sender" on those CDs AOL sends through standard mail doesn't do a damn thing; they didn't pay for the return-to-sender option.
"All postal rate increases have to be set by congress,"
No, they're set by a board of governors appointed by the White House and approved of by Congress. Congress can only say "yes" or "no" to rate change proposals. Anybody that wants to make alterations to rates have to go through the board of governors.
"and the direct mailing industry has a powerful lobby,"
Yes, direct mailers have representation in the board of what the USPS refers to as "stakeholders," but they are far from the only stakeholders (ie. customers) represented there. For example, all bills must be mailed at first class rates, which means utility companies are interested in keeping first class postage down.
But this is all besides the point. There is no cross-subsidization between rates as you are suggesting. That is flat-out illegal and frequent GAO investigations have shown that this is not happening (and I dare you to find a link with unrefutable evidence to the contrary) (No, intentionally misleading "libertarian" opinion pieces don't count). And even if they were compelled to keep standard mail rates lower, the USPS still has the problem of paying for itself, as postal operations aren't subsidized by taxes.
All in all, the USPS runs a heck of a lot more reputible operation than, say, any Baby Bell or CATV operation. They don't have anywhere near the public oversight the USPS has, which gives them more freedom to abuse their monopoly powers. And in the end, these corporations care about their investors far more than their customers.
And if you want to talk about powerful lobbying groups, take a look at all the money UPS is throwing at Congress to have the whole thing shut down. The same UPS that has raised their rates higher and more often than the USPS. Hey, it keeps the shareholders happy...
"Election outcomes no longer match exit sampling. Why? (...) the tallies are being altered, just enough to win;"
You forget to mention the possibility of "The sampling methods used are flawed." This should always be the first suspicion whenever statistics are involved.
"a perfect hand recount was easily done"
No, it isn't.
An example: A particular ballot for a single office has a cleanly-punched hole for Candidate A, and a flawed vote for Candidate B. It can be a hanging chad, a "pregnant" chad, whatever.
What does it mean? Did the voter intend to vote for A? Was the voter about to accidentally vote for B and realize their mistake? Or did the voter intend for two votes as some sort of message to the candidates ("To hell with both of ya!"). Or was the vote for A an accident and the flawed vote for B the true intent of the voter? And when deciding all this, keep in mind that you, above all, are a human being and likely have bias (however small) towards one of the two candidates.
Multiply this by several hundred thousand.
"But they were stopped from doing so by a partisan, panicking Supreme Court majority."
You're demonstrating that bias I just mentioned.
All high court decisions (state or federal) are simply one of the following two options:
"X is wrong. Fix it."
"X is not our problem. Complain to the legislature."
The recount was actually stopped by the United States Constitution, which requires that the electors cast their votes by a certain day. This deadline is written there in order to make sure that the whole process moves forward without getting bogged down by candidates bickering about the voting process (such as re-counting or even re-voting until they get the results they're looking for). If Florida's electors were unable to cast their votes, nobody would have a majority of the electoral votes and the decision would have moved on to the House of Representatives like clockwork. For better or worse, there would be somebody sworn in on January 15 (and Florida would have had a say in the process no matter what, thanks to their large population).
"Not that the thousands of operatives flooding the courts and the media weren't slowing it down to a crawl"
Which is why there's a deadline to begin with. Article II, Section 1, third paragraph guarantees a solution to the problem.
"The Supremes had no legal precedent to do what they did."
Article III, Section 2 declares that the US Supreme Court has the judicial power in "all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution(.)" Article IV, Section 4 says that "(t)he United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government(.)" So the US Supreme Court is the correct (and only) court to be hearing appeals about how the Florida Supreme Court is interpreting the Florida Constitution and Florida laws.
This may be the first time a case like this was heard by the US Supreme Court (which is all that saying "no precedence" means), but it certainly is the proper authority to be hearing such cases.
"those votes were sent in by Bush supporters after the close election was over, for the sole purpose of tipping the scale."
You assume and show bias.
"But here's the kicker: if the voter never sees the paper backup, how will the voter know the vote was accurately recorded?"
The same way it's been done for over a hundred years with the old switches-and-lever machines: The local elections commissioner signs off on the validity and operability of the machines, and representatives from all candidates are free to observe the process. The only difference is that now everybody involved will need a BS in CompSci.
"Better just to use the paper ballot and run it through a scantron."
Nope. As we saw in Florida, scan-tron and even punch cards aren't fool-proof. Really, the most fool-proof voting method I've seen yet are the old switches-and-lever machines which, unlike paper ballots of whatever form, physically prevent you from voting for two people for the same office at the same time. Electronic voting "succeeds" in the same way, but adds many more points of failure in the process.
"What this all leading up to is, how can the suggestion of printing out votes at the end of the day be meaningful?"
They're not talking about printing out votes, they're talking about making sure that the company that provides this equipment isn't acting as some sort of black box. The petitioners in question want to make sure that the company in question not only tells everybody who won, but by how many votes, and the breakdown per ward/district (or even per machine).
With that being said, let's compare the supposed benefits of computerized voting with Louisiana's statewide use of old-fashioned voting machines:
"If your disabled you can get assistance, and the machines can voice the choices as well for vision impaired."
Voting assistance is available no matter what the voting method is (including reading the choices available). However, older methods don't require commissioners to go through weeks/months of specialized training in order to properly use the equipment (which may even be different with every election).
"There is a review at the end of the voting processing asking you to verify the choices you made are accurately represented."
Votes on the old-fashioned machine aren't tabulated until you open the curtains by pulling the lever.
"Votes are transmitted to a central site and kept in the voting machines."
The old machines tabulate the results on their own, but the information still needs to be processed by humans across the district. On the other hand, the nature of the machines makes them much easier for candidate representatives to be able to observe the process and see for themselves that everything is above-board (without requiring a BS in Computer Science).
"They have multiple ways to prevent loss of votes due to power outages as well."
They are also the only voting method to date that actually requires electricity. Having redundant backups isn't as secure as not needing a backup in the first place.
When all is said and done, it seems the benefits of electronic voting are questionable at best, while the costs of developing and implementing such systems are non-negligible (to say the least) and introduces more room for both error (paper and mechanical votes don't need a CRC) and fraud (keeping people off of miles of cable versus keeping people away from individual locked boxes).
I still haven't seen any proposed electronic voting system that has anything more going for it than the Ferret Effect ("Oooh! Shiny!"). Nothing but propositions for spending thousands or even millions of dollars for no other reason than to let voters play with pretty touch-screens. The only politicians that seem to be pushing the idea are the ones that want to pretend that they're actually doing something useful.
"Electronic voting still doesn't stop dead people from voting either, they just file absentee ballots."
No, they don't. The credentials you need to present to get mailed an absentee ballot are exactly the same credentials you need to present to get allowed access to the polling machines. If you want to put computers at the polling stations, give them to the commissioners to verify driver's licenses and voter registrations with, not to the voters.
"One aspect of geekiness has always been a lack of connection with other people. This emotional chasm is what has driven many of the Great Geeks (Einstein, Feynman, et al) to pour their energy into invention and genius."
You realize, of course, that you just listed two married men in your "support" of your argument...
""Nice LAAAYdeeee, oh! with the pushing, and the shoving, I can't help but notice your eyes, nice EYYYYeeees, are glowing like the blinkenlights on my fileserver, in the mother's basement, LAAAAYdeeee...oh MY!""
"Tivo issued a press release [tivo.com] last month saying that DirecTivo HDTV boxes will be available "by year end." (I'm pretty sure I read about this here on/.)"
If they have the same feature set as the current line of TiVo DirecTV boxen, I really don't want to see the price tag on that beast. Remember that TiVo DirecTV receivers are two receivers in one (so you can watch one channel while recording another). Twin HDTV receivers would kick ass, but start out prohibitively expensive.
"they will need an IRD (DTV "box") upgrade that runs about $500."
Every DirecTV HD receiver I've seen yet (RCA, Panasonic and Hughes) also doubles as a UHF/VHF ATSC tuner as well (complete with guide information). The price tags are comparable to stand-alone ATSC tuners, so there's no real loss for the customer.
"Plus they will usually need a new dish and someone to come out and re-aim it for them"
Most new local broadcast markets need a newer dish anyway. The new local channel markets (such as New Orleans) are served by a different longitude than the basic DirecTV constellation. If I'm going to need to get a new dish anyway (assuming I want local programming), I may as well pay a few bucks more for a triple-LNB dish instead of the twin.
BTW, if you can find your way onto Slashdot, odds are you can figure out how to aim your own dish yourself (DirecWay two-way dishes excepted).
"when they do upgrade their IRD they get three HD channels -- and no local stations."
No, they get no local HD stations over the satellite feed (yet). You're still free to get a VHF/UHF antenna (no monthly fee there). And, as I mentioned, DirecTV HD receivers will decode those signals as well. Apparently, the Hughes box integrates broadcast guide information as well as DBS into a single seamless whole.
"On the other hand, terrestrial based cable systems have made up a lot of ground."
But they're up against the laws of physics. A cable can only carry so much information and, short up uprooting most of the existing coax network and outright replacing it (dark fiber, anyone?), they will have to cut some other (multiple) analog channels from the stream in order to carry a (single) HD transmission.
Satellite providers, on the other hand, have the solution of simply throwing up another satellite. And even replacing an existing sattellite is one heck of a smaller logistics headache than replacing miles of coax.
"As it is now, TW already has a better picture with less pixellation on ALL channels."
I seriously doubt your comment on picture quality and will need to see proof.
With that being said, however, DirecTV has the advantage of customer-owned equipment. It takes serious effort to buy your very own digital cable receiver (even more if you're looking to buy from someone other than the media provider). Along with the benefits of customer choice (yay capitalism), it's far cheaper in the long run for the average person to get DBS.
On top of that, satellite is affected for a few minutes by serious rain. Cable is affected for a week or so by the idiot down the street with a shovel.
Slashdot Mirror
"You see, MY sources are actual OWNERS of the telephone company."
And I spent all too much time late last year pouring over the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
In the United States, there are "Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers" (ILECs) and "Competitive Local Exchange Carriers" (CLECs). The ILECs are the "Baby Bells" that everybody knows and loves. They're called "Baby Bells" because they are what's left after the Bell Telephone Coorporation was forcibly broken up by the federal courts a few decades ago. They were broken up by anti-trust laws because they had a monopoly on local telephone service in the United States.
Instead of being broken up into competing interests (like AT&T), instead they were broken up into regional monopolies (called ILECs), each having a monopoly in a number of states but none of them allowed to operate outside their designated regions. SBC is one of those companies.
Around 1996, in an effort to deal with the problems of these little monopolies, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed, which brought about the concept of CLECs. The Act allows competing phone service providers to offer service to customers. In order to do that, the Act requires the ILECs to lease the use of their hardware to these competing interests (terms to be dictated by federal and state governments).
While the CLECs may be competing with the Baby Bells in offering services, they do it by leasing Baby Bell hardware. This introduces conflicts of interest, where the Baby Bell is required to maintain leased equipment for the competing CLECs. This is why it can be so difficult to get things straightened out if you have a problem with DSL service: The CLEC and the ILEC spend a few days blaming each other for the service problems before anything starts to get done.
So it doesn't matter worth a damn what your "sources" say. They may own the company, but unless the company is named "SBC," the most they can say is that they lease the wires. SBC still ultimately owns them.
If you can't get DSL service from your local Baby Bell, you can't get DSL from anybody. You're only able to get DSL service from a competing provider because your local Baby Bell decided to upgrade the local switches, which your provider in turn leased from them. The bill talked about in this article would have allowed SBC to not lease their DSL equipment.
"but I'd feel more confident with assorted rocketry being placed on the surface of the asteroid."
You get a heck of a lot more oomph from an Orion drive than from a chemical rocket. This is why Orion was proposed and tinkered with to begin with.
"kind of like how we control stuff in space already."
You mean the stuff that takes forever and a day to actually get anywhere?
"We'd most likely have to work on better technology to be able to pull it off."
Such as an Orion drive. Or, better yet, nuclear salt water rockets.
"A DSL connection that has NOTHING AT ALL to do with a Baby Bell."
No such thing in the United States. Your service provider may not be a Baby Bell, but a Baby Bell owns the physical wire.
"Believe it or not, SBC, but you are NOT the only game in town."
When it comes down to the physical wires, yes, they are. By law.
"The independant telcos are doing MUCH BETTER [slashdot.org] at deploying DSL than you are!"
Only when the Baby Bells let them by upgrading the hardware.
"You people bitch and moan about wanting cheap broadband, but when SBC comes in and says "we want to build a network without threats that you'll force us to subsidize the competition", everyone screams "MONOPOLY!!!""
And do you know why we require them to subsidize competition? Because they own all the phone lines! Period! It doesn't matter who your local or long-distance telephone provider is, every single call into, out of, or within the entire state of Kansas is on SBC wires. We call them (and all the other Baby Bells, like Verizon and Bellsouth and such) a monopoly because that is exactly what they are, complete with a government mandate to do so.
"Cable is the ONLY way to get it in many areas."
Another government-mandated monopoly.
Personally, I'm beginning to think the only solution to the Baby Bell and CATV provider problem is to take away the physical wires and give them to the state proper. These services are essentially a requirement in this day and age, they got to run their wiring through eminent domain to begin with, so why not take away their wires and let them just be service providers just like everybody else? Anything else is a conflict of interest.
"causing enough heat to get the warhead in the ICBM going,"
The only way to get the kind of heat needed to set off a thermonuclear (fusion) device is from a nuclear (fission) device.
Heat has nothing to do with setting off a nuclear (fission) device, at least in this day and age. Most of them use an implosion-explosion set-up, where a series of plastic explosives explode around a mass of fissionable material, compressing it down to critical density. The timing of the explosions is also pretty tricky.
Heat has nothing to do with setting off plastic explosives. Most plastic explosives are set off by compression, usually triggered by small blasting caps.
And, when all is said and done, if atmospheric re-entry were enough to set off an H-bomb, it would trigger the explosion hundreds of miles up. It would be a pretty fireworks show that screws up radio reception and throws circuit breakers, but that's about it.
"You on the other hand have been watching to many american films... It is practicly impossible to do anything with an ICBM (or a whole bunch of them) against an asteroid."
Use a series of them to nudge it out of the way, ala Project Orion.
I remember doing worse, talking about BBSes whose phone numbers began with 911...
In terms of bloodshed and carnage, comparing the Franco-Prussian War to the American Civil War is like comparing the Gulf War to WWII. Heck, I'm willing to bet the folks at Cherbourg saw more of the American Civil War than the Franco-Prussian War.
"It's a pity todays so called "wars" are more like playing starcraft with unlimited resources against an AI set on "easy"."
You just described pretty much all the wars from 1815 right on up to the middle of the nineteenth century. Then 1861 happened.
You just described pretty much all the wars from 1865 right on up to the beginning of the twentieth century. Then 1914 happened.
"... doomed to repeat," yadda yadda yadda.
The important lesson of World War II is that it's OK to slaughter your own civillians but not those of your neighbor. If it weren't for Poland, would the war in Europe really have happened?
Somebody already did
"Especially since he already had an excellent delivery system."
I somehow don't see a V-2 with Little Boy duct-taped to the top of it getting much more than three feet off the ground...
"Are you and that other [slashdot.org] wise crack telling me with straight faces that the world would have been a burning ball of fire, and that millions of lives would have been lost if those two bombs weren't dropped?"
Hrm, let's see...
Ignoring the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) that would have died (mostly on the Japanese side) in a conventional invasion of Honshu, Japan still had a stranglehold on much of the Asian mainland, stretching from Pyongyang to Singapore (and beyond) in 1945. Japan's soldiers had a warped sense of bushido and sense of ethnic superiority that caused them to perform acts of genocide that rivaled (if not surpassed) what Hitler and Stalin are known for doing. If the war would be allowed to grind on for another year or two, millions more would have died.
Just before the second atomic bomb, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. Aside from the usual "slant-eyes"/"gaijin" dehumanizing tendancies of both Japanese and Western cultures, the Soviets were fresh from a very bloody war in their western republics and Russia still remembered their stinging defeat in the Ruso-Japanese War (by a bunch of "slant-eyes"). If the Soviets and the Japanese were to be given the opportunity to shoot at each other in a long, protracted campaign, no quarter would have been asked for or given (making the Great Patriotic War seem downright civil by comparison). Millions would have died.
So, do I really think that if the war in the Pacific were not brought to a rapid conclusion by the two atomic bombs, millions more would have died? Yes.
Man, the historical accuracy of your posts just keeps going downhill...
"Not a single millitary outpost with it's contingency."
Off the top of my head, I can't remember the signifigance of Hiroshima, but Nagasaki was on the list of potential targets because of its port facilities.
" And don't forget, Pearl harbour was a millitary outpost,"
On US territory.
"if Uncle Sam wants to put his soldiers around the globe, he will have to face the risks of doing so..."
Uncle Sam wouldn't have had to worry if Uncle Sam would have continued exports to Japan that were fueling Japan's nine-year-old (at the time) war of aggression and expansion on the Asian mainland.
"Pearl Harbour, if anything was a major strategic win for Japan, nothing more, nothing less."
They were a major strategic loss, a minor tactical victory at best. There were no carriers at anchor at Pearl, which were Yamamoto's primary target. He played his only trump card and gained next to nothing because of it.
"That last statement is, of course, if we all play nice, and really believe the US was *completely unaware* of the impending attack (which I believe is bullshit)"
You are right only to a degree, only in the tactical sense.
Even the US public was well aware of Japanese intentions towards the US. Those on Oahu and the Philippines that day were taken by surprise by the attacks themselves, not the ones attacking them. Operation Barbarossa was far more of a surprise than 12/7/41.
"Do you *really* think the US was unaware of the actions of Bin Laden?"
The US wasn't in the middle of diplomatic negotiations with either bin Laden or Mullah Omar's government in September 2001. Afghanistan was only butchering its own civillians, and had yet to even consider invading one of its neighbors. Tojo's Japan had already slaughtered many, many more civillians for a longer period of time by 1941 than bin Laden could possibly hope to achieve, even after 2001.
Your metaphor is strenuous at best.
"Your argument would have been acceptable if Japan was still bombarding San Fransisco at the time, and the US was having heavy casualties."
San Francisco? No. But the Japanese still held on to the Asian mainland and was massacring Chinese civillians (like they'd been doing since 1932) essentially right on up until Hirohito set foot aboard the USS Missouiri.
But people who are stuck with a Eurocentric viewpoint on history tend not to know that.
"no major battles were being fought."
Cheng Kai-Shek and Mao Tse-Dong would disagree.
"As soon as the germans capitulated, Russia was on Japan's ass, and they were scared of it."
Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. If you knew your history, you'd know that, after being essentially blockaded and slowly starved by the US submarine force for the better part of a year, after being nuked twice, after the Soviets declared war on Japan and the sudden influx of bloodthirsty eastern-front veterans, Hideki Tojo's army was so "scared" that they staged a desparate coup to prevent the emperor from surrendering!
If the coup had been successful, it would have taken more than just two nuclear devices to convince them to surrender. Probably far more.
" What I can *guarantee* you without any ambiguity is that the second bomb was definitely *not* necessary."
I disagree, for the reasons stated above.
If you can find it, there's a flick out there named Hiroshima that examines the final months of the war in the Pacific from both the US and Japanese sides. It feels a lot like Tora! Tora! Tora! You'll see just how "scared" and "willing to surrender" the Japanese military was. It airs on Showtime from time to time.
"And it achieved exactly what it had started out to do: begin the cold war."
The Cold War was "starting" after WWII no matter what happened to Japan. It's roots come from well before 1945 (even before 1938). The only thing that the use of the atomic bombs on Japan did was make sure that the Soviets weren't able to carve up Japan like they did to Germany and (eventually) Korea.
"The US dropping that bomb completely undermined Russia's crucial role in the war... etc. etc"
What role? The Soviet Union had a non-aggression pact with Japan until August 1945. They didn't declare war on Japan until two days after the Hiroshima bombing, the day before Nagasaki. Japan had nothing to do with the Great Patriotic War.
"Read up on some history..."
Hypocrite.
"Not only that, they get a special "bulk" rate, thats about half of what we pay to send snail mail."
They pay half the rate because they do half the work the USPS would do otherwise. It's called "presorted" for a reason.
"Actually, junk mail is sent at bulk mailing rates so low that in fact it costs the post office money, which they then pass on in the form of 1st class mail stamps."
Spoken like someone who has zero experience with bulk mailing.
"Bulk mail" is cheaper for the simple reason that it is a labor-sharing program between the USPS and the mailier. The mailer pre-sorts their mail (hence the official name "presorted mail") by region before handing it off to the post office. The finer the level of sortation, the less the mailer pays in postage. A mailer that goes so far as to sort down to the carrier route (putting the pieces in the tray in the order the delivery person goes down the streets) pays considerably less than mailers that sort just by three-digit zone. This is sorting that the USPS itself doesn't have to pay for, hence the smaller postage.
And on top of that, the mailer can elect to drop the mail into the mailstream closer to the delivery point. Mailers pay less if they're willing to drop the mail off in the destination zone themselves, and they even have the option of dropping the presorted mail off at the destination post office.
The price of first class mail versus standard mail doesn't subsidize standard mail, it pays for services that don't come with standard mail. Services like "forward to the recipient's new address," "return to sender" and the like. This is why putting "return to sender" on those CDs AOL sends through standard mail doesn't do a damn thing; they didn't pay for the return-to-sender option.
"All postal rate increases have to be set by congress,"
No, they're set by a board of governors appointed by the White House and approved of by Congress. Congress can only say "yes" or "no" to rate change proposals. Anybody that wants to make alterations to rates have to go through the board of governors.
"and the direct mailing industry has a powerful lobby,"
Yes, direct mailers have representation in the board of what the USPS refers to as "stakeholders," but they are far from the only stakeholders (ie. customers) represented there. For example, all bills must be mailed at first class rates, which means utility companies are interested in keeping first class postage down.
But this is all besides the point. There is no cross-subsidization between rates as you are suggesting. That is flat-out illegal and frequent GAO investigations have shown that this is not happening (and I dare you to find a link with unrefutable evidence to the contrary) (No, intentionally misleading "libertarian" opinion pieces don't count). And even if they were compelled to keep standard mail rates lower, the USPS still has the problem of paying for itself, as postal operations aren't subsidized by taxes.
All in all, the USPS runs a heck of a lot more reputible operation than, say, any Baby Bell or CATV operation. They don't have anywhere near the public oversight the USPS has, which gives them more freedom to abuse their monopoly powers. And in the end, these corporations care about their investors far more than their customers.
And if you want to talk about powerful lobbying groups, take a look at all the money UPS is throwing at Congress to have the whole thing shut down. The same UPS that has raised their rates higher and more often than the USPS. Hey, it keeps the shareholders happy...
You forget to mention the possibility of "The sampling methods used are flawed." This should always be the first suspicion whenever statistics are involved.
"a perfect hand recount was easily done"
No, it isn't.
An example: A particular ballot for a single office has a cleanly-punched hole for Candidate A, and a flawed vote for Candidate B. It can be a hanging chad, a "pregnant" chad, whatever.
What does it mean? Did the voter intend to vote for A? Was the voter about to accidentally vote for B and realize their mistake? Or did the voter intend for two votes as some sort of message to the candidates ("To hell with both of ya!"). Or was the vote for A an accident and the flawed vote for B the true intent of the voter? And when deciding all this, keep in mind that you, above all, are a human being and likely have bias (however small) towards one of the two candidates.
Multiply this by several hundred thousand.
"But they were stopped from doing so by a partisan, panicking Supreme Court majority."
You're demonstrating that bias I just mentioned.
All high court decisions (state or federal) are simply one of the following two options:
- "X is wrong. Fix it."
- "X is not our problem. Complain to the legislature."
The recount was actually stopped by the United States Constitution, which requires that the electors cast their votes by a certain day. This deadline is written there in order to make sure that the whole process moves forward without getting bogged down by candidates bickering about the voting process (such as re-counting or even re-voting until they get the results they're looking for). If Florida's electors were unable to cast their votes, nobody would have a majority of the electoral votes and the decision would have moved on to the House of Representatives like clockwork. For better or worse, there would be somebody sworn in on January 15 (and Florida would have had a say in the process no matter what, thanks to their large population)."Not that the thousands of operatives flooding the courts and the media weren't slowing it down to a crawl"
Which is why there's a deadline to begin with. Article II, Section 1, third paragraph guarantees a solution to the problem.
"The Supremes had no legal precedent to do what they did."
Article III, Section 2 declares that the US Supreme Court has the judicial power in "all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution(.)" Article IV, Section 4 says that "(t)he United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government(.)" So the US Supreme Court is the correct (and only) court to be hearing appeals about how the Florida Supreme Court is interpreting the Florida Constitution and Florida laws.
This may be the first time a case like this was heard by the US Supreme Court (which is all that saying "no precedence" means), but it certainly is the proper authority to be hearing such cases.
"those votes were sent in by Bush supporters after the close election was over, for the sole purpose of tipping the scale."
You assume and show bias.
"But here's the kicker: if the voter never sees the paper backup, how will the voter know the vote was accurately recorded?"
The same way it's been done for over a hundred years with the old switches-and-lever machines: The local elections commissioner signs off on the validity and operability of the machines, and representatives from all candidates are free to observe the process. The only difference is that now everybody involved will need a BS in CompSci.
"Better just to use the paper ballot and run it through a scantron."
Nope. As we saw in Florida, scan-tron and even punch cards aren't fool-proof. Really, the most fool-proof voting method I've seen yet are the old switches-and-lever machines which, unlike paper ballots of whatever form, physically prevent you from voting for two people for the same office at the same time. Electronic voting "succeeds" in the same way, but adds many more points of failure in the process.
"What this all leading up to is, how can the suggestion of printing out votes at the end of the day be meaningful?"
They're not talking about printing out votes, they're talking about making sure that the company that provides this equipment isn't acting as some sort of black box. The petitioners in question want to make sure that the company in question not only tells everybody who won, but by how many votes, and the breakdown per ward/district (or even per machine).
With that being said, let's compare the supposed benefits of computerized voting with Louisiana's statewide use of old-fashioned voting machines:
"If your disabled you can get assistance, and the machines can voice the choices as well for vision impaired."
Voting assistance is available no matter what the voting method is (including reading the choices available). However, older methods don't require commissioners to go through weeks/months of specialized training in order to properly use the equipment (which may even be different with every election).
"There is a review at the end of the voting processing asking you to verify the choices you made are accurately represented."
Votes on the old-fashioned machine aren't tabulated until you open the curtains by pulling the lever.
"Votes are transmitted to a central site and kept in the voting machines."
The old machines tabulate the results on their own, but the information still needs to be processed by humans across the district. On the other hand, the nature of the machines makes them much easier for candidate representatives to be able to observe the process and see for themselves that everything is above-board (without requiring a BS in Computer Science).
"They have multiple ways to prevent loss of votes due to power outages as well."
They are also the only voting method to date that actually requires electricity. Having redundant backups isn't as secure as not needing a backup in the first place.
When all is said and done, it seems the benefits of electronic voting are questionable at best, while the costs of developing and implementing such systems are non-negligible (to say the least) and introduces more room for both error (paper and mechanical votes don't need a CRC) and fraud (keeping people off of miles of cable versus keeping people away from individual locked boxes).
I still haven't seen any proposed electronic voting system that has anything more going for it than the Ferret Effect ("Oooh! Shiny!"). Nothing but propositions for spending thousands or even millions of dollars for no other reason than to let voters play with pretty touch-screens. The only politicians that seem to be pushing the idea are the ones that want to pretend that they're actually doing something useful.
"Electronic voting still doesn't stop dead people from voting either, they just file absentee ballots."
No, they don't. The credentials you need to present to get mailed an absentee ballot are exactly the same credentials you need to present to get allowed access to the polling machines. If you want to put computers at the polling stations, give them to the commissioners to verify driver's licenses and voter registrations with, not to the voters.
"I thought it was "Scream and I'll kill you"..."
"Oh, Timmy, that was the sweetest, most threatening thing I've ever read!"
"One aspect of geekiness has always been a lack of connection with other people. This emotional chasm is what has driven many of the Great Geeks (Einstein, Feynman, et al) to pour their energy into invention and genius."
You realize, of course, that you just listed two married men in your "support" of your argument...
""Nice LAAAYdeeee, oh! with the pushing, and the shoving, I can't help but notice your eyes, nice EYYYYeeees, are glowing like the blinkenlights on my fileserver, in the mother's basement, LAAAAYdeeee...oh MY!""
Hey, that's a pretty good Dean Martin imitation.
"Tivo issued a press release [tivo.com] last month saying that DirecTivo HDTV boxes will be available "by year end." (I'm pretty sure I read about this here on /.)"
If they have the same feature set as the current line of TiVo DirecTV boxen, I really don't want to see the price tag on that beast. Remember that TiVo DirecTV receivers are two receivers in one (so you can watch one channel while recording another). Twin HDTV receivers would kick ass, but start out prohibitively expensive.
"they will need an IRD (DTV "box") upgrade that runs about $500."
Every DirecTV HD receiver I've seen yet (RCA, Panasonic and Hughes) also doubles as a UHF/VHF ATSC tuner as well (complete with guide information). The price tags are comparable to stand-alone ATSC tuners, so there's no real loss for the customer.
"Plus they will usually need a new dish and someone to come out and re-aim it for them"
Most new local broadcast markets need a newer dish anyway. The new local channel markets (such as New Orleans) are served by a different longitude than the basic DirecTV constellation. If I'm going to need to get a new dish anyway (assuming I want local programming), I may as well pay a few bucks more for a triple-LNB dish instead of the twin.
BTW, if you can find your way onto Slashdot, odds are you can figure out how to aim your own dish yourself (DirecWay two-way dishes excepted).
"when they do upgrade their IRD they get three HD channels -- and no local stations."
No, they get no local HD stations over the satellite feed (yet). You're still free to get a VHF/UHF antenna (no monthly fee there). And, as I mentioned, DirecTV HD receivers will decode those signals as well. Apparently, the Hughes box integrates broadcast guide information as well as DBS into a single seamless whole.
"On the other hand, terrestrial based cable systems have made up a lot of ground."
But they're up against the laws of physics. A cable can only carry so much information and, short up uprooting most of the existing coax network and outright replacing it (dark fiber, anyone?), they will have to cut some other (multiple) analog channels from the stream in order to carry a (single) HD transmission.
Satellite providers, on the other hand, have the solution of simply throwing up another satellite. And even replacing an existing sattellite is one heck of a smaller logistics headache than replacing miles of coax.
"As it is now, TW already has a better picture with less pixellation on ALL channels."
I seriously doubt your comment on picture quality and will need to see proof.
With that being said, however, DirecTV has the advantage of customer-owned equipment. It takes serious effort to buy your very own digital cable receiver (even more if you're looking to buy from someone other than the media provider). Along with the benefits of customer choice (yay capitalism), it's far cheaper in the long run for the average person to get DBS.
On top of that, satellite is affected for a few minutes by serious rain. Cable is affected for a week or so by the idiot down the street with a shovel.