"Ironically, this leaves the United States -- the birthplace and graveyard of the Clipper Chip -- as one of the few bastions of unregulated encryption."
Think about it: Wouldn't DOD/whatever traffic be easier to intercept and decrypt if it were the only encrypted traffic in the US? The more Joe Shmoe uses encryption, the tougher it is for enemies to pin down flows that have any stratiegic value.
Sure, the novelty aspect is fun, but having an 8-story screen means having a screen you have to move your eyes and head to see all of. Movement at what would be the edges of the monitor might not be noticed until well after that movement has shot you...
"Who are exploiting that resources from other countries, US."
By volume? Perhaps. Per capita? I think you need to start looking at Western Europe a bit more closely.
"sum of all the dogs consumption in US goes away beyond what rest of the world can feed to themselves."
And do you have numbers to back that up?
"If you give up on buying that coke, that other individual can benefit greatly and have more chance of feeding himself and his family in other countries."
If I stop buying Coke (which I don't buy anyway), I'll have more spending cash in my pocket. And other than donating that money to a charity, how is that supposed to equate with helping other people feed themselves? After all, most of that price of Coke goes to pay for Coke's marketing budget, not for the carbonated water, syrup and aluminum involved.
"Why do you rely on Japanese vehicle?"
The Koreans who made my car would be very insulted to be called Japanese. Which actually brings up another counterpoint...
" They get cheap labor, they get their metals, woods, oils (which Bush claims they own the oil) and they fucking process it go through small step that comes up as user-end product."
Hyundai may not have mined the iron ore themselves but probably made the machines that mined it. Hyundai processes their own steel. Hyundai then used the raw materials to make everything in the car themselves. Once the car is finished, they load it up onto a RORO cargo ship in Hyundai's merchant fleet that was built in a Hyundai shipyard (with Hyundai cranes moving around Hyundai steel again, ships powered by Hyundai diesel engines...). About the only thing on my car that didn't get manufactured or processed by Hyundai are the tires.
Where does Hyundai's vertical monopoly fit into your "small steps" statement?
"We complain about 7-8 hour days, complaining about stress - we act as if working causes stress."
Recent studies have shown that Americans put it more hours at work a year than any other industrialized country (including Japan). The only ("non-industrialized") countries that have us beat in that respect are South Korea and the Czech Republic.
"America has always been behind in technology compared to Japan."
Just because Japan can make more impressive little electronic doo-dads (and even that is debatable) doesn't mean they're ahead of us on everything.
When was the last time you rode on a Japanese jumbo jet? No, a 767 operated by JAL doesn't count.
Your TV may be Japanese, but what about the rest of your home appliances? Where are all the new Japanese designs for microwave ovens? Hot water heaters? New Japanese technology in refrigerator compressors? What country makes half the world's appliances again?
On the subject of compressors, I haven't heard about any new developments in air conditioning from Japan. Or is Carrier secretly a Japanese company?
All those synthetic fabrics in your clothing, were they developed in Japan or Delaware?
There was a recent article on Slashdot about some new developments in metallurgy. What country was that from again?
And these are only the examples I could think of most noticable to consumers. Of course, if Japan is so much more advanced than the US, why do they rely so much on the US economy?
... is that the USN is the branch of the military researching autonomous aircraft, not the USAF. Sheesh, not only are they behind in fighters but they'll also be behind in UAVs!
Of course, considering the USAF to be a brach of the military is really stretching it...:)
Re:Skynet, here we come
on
Robot Wars
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· Score: 2
"what is it about AI that makes people think it will automatically be evil?"
Perhaps it's not the AI in general. Perhaps it's the fact that the program's acronym also happens to be the name of the USAF's ICBM of choice. I've gotten to the point where the word "minuteman" makes me immediately think of a rocket instead of a militia member.
"cable companies could soon offer consumers value that DSL firms won't be able to match."
I go to 2Wire's website, I look at their home gateway products, and what do I see? Why, it's their HomePortal 1000W, which not only has a DSL modem and an integrated WAP, but also supports ethernet and phoneline networking.
" Mob rule is better than rule by the currupt elite out on a quest for power."
As I mention in my journal entry, you can get rid of the concept of mob rule if you shrink the size of the consituancy to minimize the effects of group psychology. That was the original idea behind the concept of a federal republic.
The same can be seen in military tactics. Ten groups of ten people each is much more effective than one group of 100 people.
"Replace "electors" with "voters" and it sounds like a good idea."
But you can't. There are something like 100+ million registered voters in the US. The only "interaction" those voters have with presidential candidates is by being one of the faceless, nameless millions to whom the candidates talk to (as opposed to "talk with") in their formulaic speeches. And what are the issues? The voters don't decide that, the network hosting the debates does by deciding who is on the panel and what few questions out of millions of possibilities are asked.
At least by voting for qualified electors the voter-to-candidate ratio is drasticly reduced, but that doesn't matter any more now that the electors aren't given free will.
"I'd rather they tried to please voters to pick them than the presidents to pick them. Notice how liberals pick liberal judges; conservatives pick conservative judges."
But party loyalty literally does not matter once their nomination is affirmed. They don't owe fundraisers any favors, they don't have a party line they need to tow to get funding for their next election, and they are free to make decisions that the vast majority of voters are unhappy with.
Consider the recent ruling in a federal circuit court that requiring the words "under God" to be in the Pledge of Alliegance is unconstitutional. Even the vast majority of voters in their circuit would disagree with that ruling, but the judges don't have to worry about pleasing the public in order to keep their job. The only thing they have to worry about is being impeached for not doing their job properly.
"I think it would be just as corrupt no matter who is choosing; representatives or the masses of people."
Elections can be made much more effective if you drop the voter-to-candidate ratio and start counting a constituant as a person instead of just a number in the latest Gallup Poll.
For example, the House of Representatives at 435 members is nowhere near the constitutionally mandated limit. Instead of having no more than 1 for every 30,000 people, we barely have 1 for every 700,000. Even without modifying the constitution, we could increase the value of an individual's opinion by over a factor of 20, because as you decrease the size of the electorate you increase the importance of minority opinions (a particular issue is more likely to be important to particular candidates).
Imagine having a person in congress to whom fair use rights is a major issue, someone who would actually voice concerns about laws like the DMCA. In our current system you'd need to have about 350,000 people in one district to care about the DCMA for this to happen. Imagine if that number was dropped to 15,000.
Of course, it will take a lot to convince House members to do this because increasing the size of the House will both decrease the power of House members (who have to compete with more people) and their parties (as drawing district lines isn't as crucial as it used to be).
"my question is 'How do they identify 'garbage'?'"
When it comes across an object within certain size constraints, it calculates it's orbital data and sends it down to NORAD, which matches the data up with their database of known space debris. If there's a match, the robot picks it up.
And this is a bad thing? I've said it before and I'll say it again: "Democracy" is just a pretty name for mob rule.
"We have to put up with this Electoral College nonsense."
The only nonsense there is the fact that most of those electors aren't allowed to exercise free will. We've gone from a system where electors could have some sort of personal interaction with presidential candidates, the ability to ask and answer they're own questions instead of the ones the press deems important, to one where the guy who looks best on TV gets elected. Again, this is a good thing?
"I think we should be choosing Supreme Court justices"
No! No! A thousand times NO!!! The justices of the Supreme Court of the United States should be accountable to the federal constitution and the federal constitution only! "Will the voters like this?" is a question that should never go through a judge's mind. The "justice" doled out by the court of public opinion isn't justice at all. We've already fouled up the system that decides state-level judges (where candidates tout not how fair they are but how many convicts they've locked up for long prison terms), why on earth would you want to screw up the SCUS as well? If anything, that would be a way of guaranteeing the establishment of the "autocratic theocracy" you claim you fear. "Vote for me! I locked up thousands of undesirables my last term!"
"and cabinet members"
Yeah, instead of letting the president pick people he knows he can work with, let's let the faceless millions that don't know anything that isn't on TV decide for him. Great idea!
"Senate seats and Presidential houses are reserved for the quite rich"
Because the folks like you screaming for more "democracy" put them there! By demanding the "right" to vote directly for these people you guaranteed that only those people who could afford TV time are put there. And you want to spread this heinous system to even more corners of the federal government?
I already ranted about a lot of this in a past journal entry of mine. Of course, if you would rather remodel the US government into one that can change on aweeklybasis, you're probably far too gone to see the light of reason. And we'll end up with elected officials that bend over backwards to please the voters in the same way the chief executives of Enron and WorldCom tried to please theirs. After all, if all that matters is what the voters say, why bother with the law?
"We need space exploration to inspire people through monumental achivements."
Um... dude... Some guy just went around the world non-stop in a hot-air balloon he was greeted with a collective yawn. The public doesn't care about that stuff, they'd rather watch the latest Britney Spears video.
"After every mission with the shuttle they spend 1000's of hours checking and replacing the >30k tiles that line the heat shield part of the body."
Let's see _you_ go through the atmosphere at Mach 20+ and hang on to all your parts. And even then the heat dissipation systems on the space shuttle are still the best thing being used out there.
"I'd say that the *design* is 25+ years old but the actual shuttle is at best a few years"
If that were true then Columbia would be able to make ISS flights. Tiles are replaced as needed, SSMEs are replaced as a part of scheduled maintenance, other incidentals like tires... Other than that, beyond the new glass cockpits and the Canadarms what you see is what's always been there.
"This is all good and neat, but how about we look at the treaty for banning land mines?"
I can imagine a world without violence or suffering, full of peace and happiness. And I can imagine us invading that world because they'd never see it coming.
The only thing disarmament treaties like that are good for is making sure the other guy has the weapons in question while you don't. Look how well they kept Japan from building battleships and Germany from re-arming back in the 1920's and 1930's.
It's a question of cost-effectiveness. There are plenty of ways to de-mine an area during peace time, the most popular of which (I believe) is to put a bunch of chains on a rotating drum on the front of a tank. It drives over the mines, it sets them off, no more mines.
That solution is a heck of a lot less expensive than a "freaking laser beam." You don't need to be a rocket scientist to use it or maintain it, and you certainly don't need a G-8 level of technological industry to support it.
The only time that using a laser for de-mining becomes cost effective is when you have to have several thousand troops moved through area X yesterday and you need to get rid of the mines now.
Seriously, suggesting a laser for peacetime demining is like saying "A tomohawk cruise missile is really good at knocking down buildings. Why don't engineering firms use them instead of wrecking balls and shaped charges?"
What AOL/TW really needs to do is to get off their asses and do some more things with their animated super hero serei. I'm sorry but just about every live-action Batman movie I've seen can't hold a candle to a single half-hour episode of Batman: The Animated Series. Give us a JL movie or another Batman Beyond or something!
Just looking at the way the live-action Batman movies WB has put out portrays the villans (the Joker, the Penguin, Mr. Freeze, Bane, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Two-Face, etc.) and then looking at how those same characters have been done in the animated series... can anybody honestly tell me that they're really looking forward to another live-action movie? What they did to Mr. Freeze and Bane alone should be reason to shudder with fear...
"It's kind of hard to imagine anybody but Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel"
Once upon a time nobody could see anybody but George Reeves playing Superman. A change in actors can be done successfully. Whether it will be done successfully is a whole other matter.
On the other hand, Batman has been played by a revolving door of actors since Keaton.
"Without doubt, they are a sovereign nation (check the history of Sealand if you don't believe me)."
You are not a sovereign nation just because you say so. The only way you can get nation status is if you are officially recognized by other nations. Period. This has been proven in history time and again, and labelling a period of history either as a "revolution" or a "civil war" hinges on this one fact.
Sealand isn't listed in the CIA World Factbook. As far as I'm concerned they are not a sovereign nation. And in this day and age if the US says you're not a country, you're up a creek without a flag. Just ask Ravalomanana when he really became the president of Madagascar.
"Yes, the SAS could raid them, but that would effectively mean that the UK had declared war on another nation."
It would only be seen that way by any countries that have decided to see Sealand as a sovereign nation. And who is that? Anyone? Not the US, not the EU, not the UN, not anybody that has much more than a Red Ryder BB gun.
It's just like when the US "invaded the Confederate States of America." The powers of Europe never saw the CSA as an independent nation, so the entire civil war (as opposed to a revolution) was seen as an internal matter by the rest of the world.
So you go ahead and keep believing that it's a sovereign nation. And you can be as outraged as you want once the place gets shut down. It's not going to change the fact that 99.9% of the world sees it as an internal affair of the British and it certainly won't change the fact that Sealand will be shut down just the same.
Re:I'm not sure what to think...
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Ebay buys PayPal
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· Score: 2
"Yeah, It's called Canada"
That's all well and good, but I have international customers and my bank doesn't charge me anything when I make a deposit in a foreign currencies, including Canadian dollars. How much would it cost you to deposit a US personal check? I bet it's not very pretty...
"I payed for my dinner with my bank card (via Interac) AT my table at the restaurant thanks to a nifty little wireless device the waiters carry around with them."
Oh yeah, that's what I need. My debit card number broadcast over radio frequencies.
From one of your linked sites:
"The banks will watch to see what kind of response there is over the summer months and each will set up their own pricing structure. The fee will likely be between $1 and $1.50 per electronic transfer,"
For about the equivalent of those rates in Yankee dollars I could sign up with, for example, USPS Payment Services which not only allows me to e-mail people money, but they also tie their "Pay@Delivery" service into Priority Mail with Delivery Confirmation so that the seller doesn't get payment until the package gets delivered. Oh, and it's also one of those BillPay services where they'll mail a cashier's check out to a payee if they need to.
"along the lines of what you pay to make an automated teller withdrawal at a bank machine that belongs to a bank where you don't do business. "
Heh heh... except my bank will pay another bank's ATM fees, up to $1.50 US.
I like my bank just the way it is, thankyouverymuch.
Re:I'm not sure what to think...
on
Ebay buys PayPal
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· Score: 2
"They don't have all the nice tools, but for now the price is right!"
From the fine print:
"When sending money by c2it internationally, c2it will charge $10 per International Check and $15 per International Direct Deposit....
In addition to the transaction fee, any difference between the foreign exchange rate given to you and the foreign exchange rate received by c2it will be kept by c2it. Please see "Fees, Limits, and Availability" at the bottom of any page for details."
On the other hand, my bank doesn't charge me for deposits in foreign currencies. Period. I've received personal checks and/or domestic money orders from Canada, the UK and Australia to name a few and the only extra resource of mine it cost was a little extra time waiting for the deposit.
While the domestic stuff is free, I'm a little wary about that as well. I can just hear all the Citi telemarketers calling me now...
"Imagine how much the Russians would be able to consume if they were allowed to consume resources proportional to the area of their country."
If it's within their own country, what right do we have to say anything about it? Why shouldn't they be able to use Russian oil however damn well they please?
Besides, I think the numbers showed that we are not consuming domestic resources in proportion to the size of our country. In order to match Western Europe's numbers, we'd have to double (or quadruple in some cases) our per capita demand.
What it sounds like you're trying to say is "The US should stop using its own resources so it can give them to other people instead." Why should I as an American be punished for Europe's lack of domestic energy sources?
Hate to tell you this but communism went out with the 80's.
I'm not sure what to think...
on
Ebay buys PayPal
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I trust PayPal about as far as I can throw them, but I like BillPoints just about the same. I always found it rather interesting that they can take money out of my checking account "instantly," but it takes 3-4 days to put money into it (allowing them to earn interest off of mymoney). Of course, there's also PayPal's social engineering attcks ("We can e-mail your buyers when your auctions end automatically, update your PayPal logo to a "Pay Now" button, all you have to do is give us your eBay password...")
To be honest I'm not really sure what to make of this development. In my auctions I've been flip-flopping between accepting one or the other depending on what price I think it will go for (PayPal is a little cheaper for auctions over $15.00), but either way I still feel like I'm getting ripped off from their per-dollar fees. Heck, at this point I'd rather my buyers mail me a personal check instead, and I'm getting to the point where I'm considering to offer my buyers a refund of the $1.27 if they just mail me a money order instead...
Will this make things on eBay more smooth? Will PayPal's fees for e-checks more resemble BillPoint's? Will they now start charging a "deposit fee" just as BillPoint does? Will eBay start throwing around their monopoly power at my expense? Will there ever be a new competitor to them? Will this prevent PayPal and eBay from passing the blame back and forth if there is a problem with a transaction? Will BillPoint's fees drop?
And, most importantly, does anybody else know of a current competitor to both of these people I could switch to?
"America's consumption 'footprint' is 12.2 hectares per head of population compared to the UK's 6.29ha while Western Europe as a whole stands at 6.28ha."
Now here's something that has me wondering. If we're using all this land, how much of it is our own?
According to the World Factbook, the US (third largest country in the world) has 9,158,960 km^2 and a population (also third) of 278,058,881, giving us an area-per-person of 3.29 ha. So we are capable of supplying about 27% of our own land needs.
Moving on to the UK, it turns out they only have about 0.405 ha per person, supplying only 6% of their needs. As for some other Western European countries, France gets about 15% and Germany about 7%.
The two African countries mentioned, Ethiopia and Burundi, are in the 80% range, but still need outside land-energy suppliers.
"Whether it's 50 years or 500, we are currently using resources faster than they are replenished. And the U.S. does consume a disproportionate amount of the resources in the world."
I realize that looking at total available land per person per country is simplifying things a great deal, but it would seem at least with this cursory glance that it's the Europeans that are consuming a disproportionate amount of other countries' resources. The United States may use a lot of resources, but we also happen to own a lot of resources (ie. within our own borders). As a brief example, between Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico the US is less dependant on foriegn oil suppliers than Western European countries by far.
Interestingly enough, it seems to be the European powers that are the most vocal about conserving available global resources, much more so than the United States. Coinsidence?
" a new alloy that is stronger than steel and titanium"
By mass or by volume? Stronger with reguards to tension, compression, or shear? Or some combination?
Heck, I can think of a building material that is more easily molded than either of those two metals and is actually stronger in many ways. It's called concrete. Just don't try to put it under tension or shear...
Slashdot Mirror
"Ironically, this leaves the United States -- the birthplace and graveyard of the Clipper Chip -- as one of the few bastions of unregulated encryption."
Think about it: Wouldn't DOD/whatever traffic be easier to intercept and decrypt if it were the only encrypted traffic in the US? The more Joe Shmoe uses encryption, the tougher it is for enemies to pin down flows that have any stratiegic value.
Sure, the novelty aspect is fun, but having an 8-story screen means having a screen you have to move your eyes and head to see all of. Movement at what would be the edges of the monitor might not be noticed until well after that movement has shot you...
"Who are exploiting that resources from other countries, US."
By volume? Perhaps. Per capita? I think you need to start looking at Western Europe a bit more closely.
"sum of all the dogs consumption in US goes away beyond what rest of the world can feed to themselves."
And do you have numbers to back that up?
"If you give up on buying that coke, that other individual can benefit greatly and have more chance of feeding himself and his family in other countries."
If I stop buying Coke (which I don't buy anyway), I'll have more spending cash in my pocket. And other than donating that money to a charity, how is that supposed to equate with helping other people feed themselves? After all, most of that price of Coke goes to pay for Coke's marketing budget, not for the carbonated water, syrup and aluminum involved.
"Why do you rely on Japanese vehicle?"
The Koreans who made my car would be very insulted to be called Japanese. Which actually brings up another counterpoint...
" They get cheap labor, they get their metals, woods, oils (which Bush claims they own the oil) and they fucking process it go through small step that comes up as user-end product."
Hyundai may not have mined the iron ore themselves but probably made the machines that mined it. Hyundai processes their own steel. Hyundai then used the raw materials to make everything in the car themselves. Once the car is finished, they load it up onto a RORO cargo ship in Hyundai's merchant fleet that was built in a Hyundai shipyard (with Hyundai cranes moving around Hyundai steel again, ships powered by Hyundai diesel engines...). About the only thing on my car that didn't get manufactured or processed by Hyundai are the tires.
Where does Hyundai's vertical monopoly fit into your "small steps" statement?
"We complain about 7-8 hour days, complaining about stress - we act as if working causes stress."
Recent studies have shown that Americans put it more hours at work a year than any other industrialized country (including Japan). The only ("non-industrialized") countries that have us beat in that respect are South Korea and the Czech Republic.
"America has always been behind in technology compared to Japan."
Just because Japan can make more impressive little electronic doo-dads (and even that is debatable) doesn't mean they're ahead of us on everything.
When was the last time you rode on a Japanese jumbo jet? No, a 767 operated by JAL doesn't count.
Your TV may be Japanese, but what about the rest of your home appliances? Where are all the new Japanese designs for microwave ovens? Hot water heaters? New Japanese technology in refrigerator compressors? What country makes half the world's appliances again?
On the subject of compressors, I haven't heard about any new developments in air conditioning from Japan. Or is Carrier secretly a Japanese company?
All those synthetic fabrics in your clothing, were they developed in Japan or Delaware?
There was a recent article on Slashdot about some new developments in metallurgy. What country was that from again?
And these are only the examples I could think of most noticable to consumers. Of course, if Japan is so much more advanced than the US, why do they rely so much on the US economy?
... is that the USN is the branch of the military researching autonomous aircraft, not the USAF. Sheesh, not only are they behind in fighters but they'll also be behind in UAVs!
:)
Of course, considering the USAF to be a brach of the military is really stretching it...
"what is it about AI that makes people think it will automatically be evil?"
Perhaps it's not the AI in general. Perhaps it's the fact that the program's acronym also happens to be the name of the USAF's ICBM of choice. I've gotten to the point where the word "minuteman" makes me immediately think of a rocket instead of a militia member.
"cable companies could soon offer consumers value that DSL firms won't be able to match."
I go to 2Wire's website, I look at their home gateway products, and what do I see? Why, it's their HomePortal 1000W, which not only has a DSL modem and an integrated WAP, but also supports ethernet and phoneline networking.
*sigh*
" Mob rule is better than rule by the currupt elite out on a quest for power."
As I mention in my journal entry, you can get rid of the concept of mob rule if you shrink the size of the consituancy to minimize the effects of group psychology. That was the original idea behind the concept of a federal republic.
The same can be seen in military tactics. Ten groups of ten people each is much more effective than one group of 100 people.
"Replace "electors" with "voters" and it sounds like a good idea."
But you can't. There are something like 100+ million registered voters in the US. The only "interaction" those voters have with presidential candidates is by being one of the faceless, nameless millions to whom the candidates talk to (as opposed to "talk with") in their formulaic speeches. And what are the issues? The voters don't decide that, the network hosting the debates does by deciding who is on the panel and what few questions out of millions of possibilities are asked.
At least by voting for qualified electors the voter-to-candidate ratio is drasticly reduced, but that doesn't matter any more now that the electors aren't given free will.
"I'd rather they tried to please voters to pick them than the presidents to pick them. Notice how liberals pick liberal judges; conservatives pick conservative judges."
But party loyalty literally does not matter once their nomination is affirmed. They don't owe fundraisers any favors, they don't have a party line they need to tow to get funding for their next election, and they are free to make decisions that the vast majority of voters are unhappy with.
Consider the recent ruling in a federal circuit court that requiring the words "under God" to be in the Pledge of Alliegance is unconstitutional. Even the vast majority of voters in their circuit would disagree with that ruling, but the judges don't have to worry about pleasing the public in order to keep their job. The only thing they have to worry about is being impeached for not doing their job properly.
"I think it would be just as corrupt no matter who is choosing; representatives or the masses of people."
Elections can be made much more effective if you drop the voter-to-candidate ratio and start counting a constituant as a person instead of just a number in the latest Gallup Poll.
For example, the House of Representatives at 435 members is nowhere near the constitutionally mandated limit. Instead of having no more than 1 for every 30,000 people, we barely have 1 for every 700,000. Even without modifying the constitution, we could increase the value of an individual's opinion by over a factor of 20, because as you decrease the size of the electorate you increase the importance of minority opinions (a particular issue is more likely to be important to particular candidates).
Imagine having a person in congress to whom fair use rights is a major issue, someone who would actually voice concerns about laws like the DMCA. In our current system you'd need to have about 350,000 people in one district to care about the DCMA for this to happen. Imagine if that number was dropped to 15,000.
Of course, it will take a lot to convince House members to do this because increasing the size of the House will both decrease the power of House members (who have to compete with more people) and their parties (as drawing district lines isn't as crucial as it used to be).
"my question is 'How do they identify 'garbage'?'"
When it comes across an object within certain size constraints, it calculates it's orbital data and sends it down to NORAD, which matches the data up with their database of known space debris. If there's a match, the robot picks it up.
"The USA is a Republic, not a Democracy"
And this is a bad thing? I've said it before and I'll say it again: "Democracy" is just a pretty name for mob rule.
"We have to put up with this Electoral College nonsense."
The only nonsense there is the fact that most of those electors aren't allowed to exercise free will. We've gone from a system where electors could have some sort of personal interaction with presidential candidates, the ability to ask and answer they're own questions instead of the ones the press deems important, to one where the guy who looks best on TV gets elected. Again, this is a good thing?
"I think we should be choosing Supreme Court justices"
No! No! A thousand times NO!!! The justices of the Supreme Court of the United States should be accountable to the federal constitution and the federal constitution only! "Will the voters like this?" is a question that should never go through a judge's mind. The "justice" doled out by the court of public opinion isn't justice at all. We've already fouled up the system that decides state-level judges (where candidates tout not how fair they are but how many convicts they've locked up for long prison terms), why on earth would you want to screw up the SCUS as well? If anything, that would be a way of guaranteeing the establishment of the "autocratic theocracy" you claim you fear. "Vote for me! I locked up thousands of undesirables my last term!"
"and cabinet members"
Yeah, instead of letting the president pick people he knows he can work with, let's let the faceless millions that don't know anything that isn't on TV decide for him. Great idea!
"Senate seats and Presidential houses are reserved for the quite rich"
Because the folks like you screaming for more "democracy" put them there! By demanding the "right" to vote directly for these people you guaranteed that only those people who could afford TV time are put there. And you want to spread this heinous system to even more corners of the federal government?
I already ranted about a lot of this in a past journal entry of mine. Of course, if you would rather remodel the US government into one that can change on a weekly basis, you're probably far too gone to see the light of reason. And we'll end up with elected officials that bend over backwards to please the voters in the same way the chief executives of Enron and WorldCom tried to please theirs. After all, if all that matters is what the voters say, why bother with the law?
"We need space exploration to inspire people through monumental achivements."
Um... dude... Some guy just went around the world non-stop in a hot-air balloon he was greeted with a collective yawn. The public doesn't care about that stuff, they'd rather watch the latest Britney Spears video.
"After every mission with the shuttle they spend 1000's of hours checking and replacing the >30k tiles that line the heat shield part of the body."
Let's see _you_ go through the atmosphere at Mach 20+ and hang on to all your parts. And even then the heat dissipation systems on the space shuttle are still the best thing being used out there.
"I'd say that the *design* is 25+ years old but the actual shuttle is at best a few years"
If that were true then Columbia would be able to make ISS flights. Tiles are replaced as needed, SSMEs are replaced as a part of scheduled maintenance, other incidentals like tires... Other than that, beyond the new glass cockpits and the Canadarms what you see is what's always been there.
"I say we should be able to vote on what NASA should focus on next."
We do. Every two years in November. It's called "voting for the guys who dole out the budget."
It's a question of cost-effectiveness. There are plenty of ways to de-mine an area during peace time, the most popular of which (I believe) is to put a bunch of chains on a rotating drum on the front of a tank. It drives over the mines, it sets them off, no more mines.
That solution is a heck of a lot less expensive than a "freaking laser beam." You don't need to be a rocket scientist to use it or maintain it, and you certainly don't need a G-8 level of technological industry to support it.
The only time that using a laser for de-mining becomes cost effective is when you have to have several thousand troops moved through area X yesterday and you need to get rid of the mines now.
Seriously, suggesting a laser for peacetime demining is like saying "A tomohawk cruise missile is really good at knocking down buildings. Why don't engineering firms use them instead of wrecking balls and shaped charges?"
What AOL/TW really needs to do is to get off their asses and do some more things with their animated super hero serei. I'm sorry but just about every live-action Batman movie I've seen can't hold a candle to a single half-hour episode of Batman: The Animated Series. Give us a JL movie or another Batman Beyond or something!
Just looking at the way the live-action Batman movies WB has put out portrays the villans (the Joker, the Penguin, Mr. Freeze, Bane, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Two-Face, etc.) and then looking at how those same characters have been done in the animated series... can anybody honestly tell me that they're really looking forward to another live-action movie? What they did to Mr. Freeze and Bane alone should be reason to shudder with fear...
"It's kind of hard to imagine anybody but Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel"
Once upon a time nobody could see anybody but George Reeves playing Superman. A change in actors can be done successfully. Whether it will be done successfully is a whole other matter.
On the other hand, Batman has been played by a revolving door of actors since Keaton.
"Without doubt, they are a sovereign nation (check the history of Sealand if you don't believe me)."
You are not a sovereign nation just because you say so. The only way you can get nation status is if you are officially recognized by other nations. Period. This has been proven in history time and again, and labelling a period of history either as a "revolution" or a "civil war" hinges on this one fact.
Sealand isn't listed in the CIA World Factbook. As far as I'm concerned they are not a sovereign nation. And in this day and age if the US says you're not a country, you're up a creek without a flag. Just ask Ravalomanana when he really became the president of Madagascar.
"Yes, the SAS could raid them, but that would effectively mean that the UK had declared war on another nation."
It would only be seen that way by any countries that have decided to see Sealand as a sovereign nation. And who is that? Anyone? Not the US, not the EU, not the UN, not anybody that has much more than a Red Ryder BB gun.
It's just like when the US "invaded the Confederate States of America." The powers of Europe never saw the CSA as an independent nation, so the entire civil war (as opposed to a revolution) was seen as an internal matter by the rest of the world.
So you go ahead and keep believing that it's a sovereign nation. And you can be as outraged as you want once the place gets shut down. It's not going to change the fact that 99.9% of the world sees it as an internal affair of the British and it certainly won't change the fact that Sealand will be shut down just the same.
"Yeah, It's called Canada"
That's all well and good, but I have international customers and my bank doesn't charge me anything when I make a deposit in a foreign currencies, including Canadian dollars. How much would it cost you to deposit a US personal check? I bet it's not very pretty...
"I payed for my dinner with my bank card (via Interac) AT my table at the restaurant thanks to a nifty little wireless device the waiters carry around with them."
Oh yeah, that's what I need. My debit card number broadcast over radio frequencies.
From one of your linked sites:
"The banks will watch to see what kind of response there is over the summer months and each will set up their own pricing structure. The fee will likely be between $1 and $1.50 per electronic transfer,"
For about the equivalent of those rates in Yankee dollars I could sign up with, for example, USPS Payment Services which not only allows me to e-mail people money, but they also tie their "Pay@Delivery" service into Priority Mail with Delivery Confirmation so that the seller doesn't get payment until the package gets delivered. Oh, and it's also one of those BillPay services where they'll mail a cashier's check out to a payee if they need to.
"along the lines of what you pay to make an automated teller withdrawal at a bank machine that belongs to a bank where you don't do business. "
Heh heh... except my bank will pay another bank's ATM fees, up to $1.50 US.
I like my bank just the way it is, thankyouverymuch.
"They don't
...
have all the nice tools, but for now the price is
right!"
From the fine print:
"When sending money by c2it internationally, c2it will charge $10 per International Check and $15 per International Direct Deposit.
In addition to the transaction fee, any difference between the foreign exchange rate given to you and the foreign exchange rate received by c2it will be kept by c2it. Please see "Fees, Limits, and Availability" at the bottom of any page for details."
On the other hand, my bank doesn't charge me for deposits in foreign currencies. Period. I've received personal checks and/or domestic money orders from Canada, the UK and Australia to name a few and the only extra resource of mine it cost was a little extra time waiting for the deposit.
While the domestic stuff is free, I'm a little wary about that as well. I can just hear all the Citi telemarketers calling me now...
"Imagine how much the Russians would be able to consume if they were allowed to consume resources proportional to the area of their country."
If it's within their own country, what right do we have to say anything about it? Why shouldn't they be able to use Russian oil however damn well they please?
Besides, I think the numbers showed that we are not consuming domestic resources in proportion to the size of our country. In order to match Western Europe's numbers, we'd have to double (or quadruple in some cases) our per capita demand.
What it sounds like you're trying to say is "The US should stop using its own resources so it can give them to other people instead." Why should I as an American be punished for Europe's lack of domestic energy sources?
Hate to tell you this but communism went out with the 80's.
I trust PayPal about as far as I can throw them, but I like BillPoints just about the same. I always found it rather interesting that they can take money out of my checking account "instantly," but it takes 3-4 days to put money into it (allowing them to earn interest off of mymoney). Of course, there's also PayPal's social engineering attcks ("We can e-mail your buyers when your auctions end automatically, update your PayPal logo to a "Pay Now" button, all you have to do is give us your eBay password...")
To be honest I'm not really sure what to make of this development. In my auctions I've been flip-flopping between accepting one or the other depending on what price I think it will go for (PayPal is a little cheaper for auctions over $15.00), but either way I still feel like I'm getting ripped off from their per-dollar fees. Heck, at this point I'd rather my buyers mail me a personal check instead, and I'm getting to the point where I'm considering to offer my buyers a refund of the $1.27 if they just mail me a money order instead...
Will this make things on eBay more smooth? Will PayPal's fees for e-checks more resemble BillPoint's? Will they now start charging a "deposit fee" just as BillPoint does? Will eBay start throwing around their monopoly power at my expense? Will there ever be a new competitor to them? Will this prevent PayPal and eBay from passing the blame back and forth if there is a problem with a transaction? Will BillPoint's fees drop?
And, most importantly, does anybody else know of a current competitor to both of these people I could switch to?
"America's consumption 'footprint' is 12.2 hectares per head of population compared to the UK's 6.29ha while Western Europe as a whole stands at 6.28ha."
Now here's something that has me wondering. If we're using all this land, how much of it is our own?
According to the World Factbook, the US (third largest country in the world) has 9,158,960 km^2 and a population (also third) of 278,058,881, giving us an area-per-person of 3.29 ha. So we are capable of supplying about 27% of our own land needs.
Moving on to the UK, it turns out they only have about 0.405 ha per person, supplying only 6% of their needs. As for some other Western European countries, France gets about 15% and Germany about 7%.
The two African countries mentioned, Ethiopia and Burundi, are in the 80% range, but still need outside land-energy suppliers.
"Whether it's 50 years or 500, we are currently using resources faster than they are replenished. And the U.S. does consume a disproportionate amount of the resources in the world."
I realize that looking at total available land per person per country is simplifying things a great deal, but it would seem at least with this cursory glance that it's the Europeans that are consuming a disproportionate amount of other countries' resources. The United States may use a lot of resources, but we also happen to own a lot of resources (ie. within our own borders). As a brief example, between Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico the US is less dependant on foriegn oil suppliers than Western European countries by far.
Interestingly enough, it seems to be the European powers that are the most vocal about conserving available global resources, much more so than the United States. Coinsidence?
" a new alloy that is stronger than steel and titanium"
By mass or by volume? Stronger with reguards to tension, compression, or shear? Or some combination?
Heck, I can think of a building material that is more easily molded than either of those two metals and is actually stronger in many ways. It's called concrete. Just don't try to put it under tension or shear...