I have a gut feeling one of the reasons the EU allows this is that the EU feels the relationship with the US would be damaged if they didn't. There's probably not a single nation in the EU at present that sees Iran as their Most Dangerous Enemy(tm). Everyone knows that Iran is at least 10 years away from any nuclear capabilities, including power stations, for crying out loud.
My first comment on your statement: Just because the EU does not see Iran as their most dangerous enemy, does not mean it isn't so. What other player in that region is more unstable, more bellicose towards democracy, and has denounced nations that support Israel? (which most, if not all, European nations do.) Iran is suspected in aiding subversive groups in Afghanistan (which is a NATO/EU effort as well as a US effort) and Iraq. Iran has an active nuclear program which could be set up to create atomic weapons.( if we take suggestion from another nation with an active program a few years ago with bellicose language and a shady track record, AKA North Korea. Who did indeed go on to make atomic weapons.)
My second comment is that the UN's watchdog, probably the most authoritative voice on atomic energy and weapons production, has stated the Iran is 3-8 years from the bomb. http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2087272,00 .html
If we started saying "no" to the US, on the other hand, it could jeopardize trade and good-will with the US. In a big way, if you look at the US' track record of the last 7 years.
A larger snub was the Iraq war. France has refused participation and did a great deal of stonewalling; Aside from a small amount of 'no france' individuals; there has not been any effort by the government of the United States (other than freedom fries) to curtail our economic activity in Europe. As a parent poster noted, the EU has major purchasing power and a large number of companies in the United States do a large amount of business in the EU. I just don't see that argument as being very convincing. Also, by allowing the missiles they do alienate the Russians, losing their economic support (and they have treasure-troves of natural gas and oil.)
I appreciate your candor; but to me, the EU respects it own sovereignty. It would not allow useless or purposeless weapons to be placed on its soil, if it did not believe there is a real threat.
You seem to forget that the US has been very, very involved in weapons trading with Iraq during the wars there. Hell, they single-handedly installed Saddam Hussein's regime when they felt Khomeini had "undesirable" tendencies.
I did not forget. I however, did not at all in my post lend credibility to the United States' foreign policy at all. I think instead you assumed that because I snubbed the EU's member nations foreign policy, that I am a proponent of the US foreign policy. I am not.
You failed to address the meat of my argument, which is, if the EU does not feel that the threat that the US suggests exists, they would not allow the missiles to be placed in EU member nation territory.
You're threading on thin ice if you're trying to white-wash the US foreign policy with regards to armaments. If you want to start a character-defamation or pie-throwing contest, you'd better do it on a topic everyone's squeaky clean on.
Your statement implies that one can only denounce a foreign policy to which your own nation or all other nations does not adhere to. That's a pretty restrictive and arbitrary position to take. If that were the case, no one could criticize anyone with regards to foreign policy. The United States previously permitted slavery by law. This does not destroy my argument that any state that currently allows slavery is illegitimate. The same principle applies to the situation with Iran. The nation I live in may not have the best track record when it comes to foreign policy; but that does not stop me from analyzing and forming an opinion based on facts of a current foreign policy of another nation.
The EU ought to kick any US missile bases that do not serve our collective purposes off our territories
That's the thing. The EU has no problem snubbing the United States, as illustrated in the Iraq war, etc. If the EU did not want protection from Iran, they would not allow these interceptors.
The EU has played it close to Iran, Iraq and other questionable regimes. They have done business with them in the past. (I believe the nuclear reactors built in Iraq were of French build). Now they have to deal with the reality of a potentially nuclear-armed Terhan; They welcome any protection they can get from their shortsighted decision-making.
The Europeans preach appeasement and tolerance of illegitimate dictators; yet they're the ones most vulnerable to the whims of such people. It is to be seen if the chickens will come home to roost.
While I do believe this company was pie in the sky, saying we've never made 36,000 miles of anything is a little short-sighted. We have at least that many miles in paved road in the industrial world, and under those roads are wires, pipes, and miles of other things we've made lots of.
If enough people who adhere to the faith do it, it becomes de facto part of the faith. It was said the scripture didn't dictate holocaust denial, and I countered with a number of elements from another faith which have not been declared by scripture, yet are 'part of the faith'. Walk into a mosque in London and ask any patron if they believe in the holocaust. Ask a prayer leader. The people denying the holocaust are often Imams, who are essentially representative of the faith and its teachings.
Do you believe being anti-abortion is part of the catholic faith? I'd say so, since the leaders of the church have said it, and priests will gladly confirm the fact for you.
I believe what constitutes being 'part of the faith' are those things largely practiced and believed by a majority of the practitioners of the faith in question.
This is untrue with the advent of media. One can sift through archives and see videos of wilted and dead Holocaust victims, and bodies stacked like cordwood. There are videos of Japanese internment camps, which, while the people may look haggard and unhappy, contains no stacks of bodies. The memoirs of the Japanese victims of the internment camps do not match the brutality described in the memoirs of the Jewish survivors.
especially since their holy books etc were written long before it actually happened
A large part of Catholic doctrine is not contained in the 'official' holy books such as the bible (nowhere in the bible does it talk about a Pope, or priests, or the scapula, or the rosary), but rather by the catechism and periodic councils of priests and other leaders who every now and again 'divine' how we should dress, eat, or fuck based on 'research'.
To say that holocaust denial is not a common Islamic thread because their holy books were written before the holocaust is disingenuous. the ISLAMIC republic of iran held a large holocaust denial conference. There are about 50 videos on youtube from the MEMRI group (http://www.memri.org/) showing that on any given day, you can turn on the TV in the islamic world and hear a religious official or pseudo-academic deny the atrocities of the holocaust.
unemployment is an even greater problem than in the western world Depends on what you mean by the 'western world'. if you mean the United States, we have a less than 5% unemployment rate, which means we are actually experiencing a labor shortage. (http://www.bls.gov/ 4.5% in April)
Instead, efforts should go in the direction of installing world-wide minimum standards in both regards... Enforceable by whom?
Also, who are we to tell third world nations how to live? If it means that citizens can earn enough money to buy food and build capital and equity; and perhaps even scratch out a meaningful existence, don't they have a right to? What if they make a conscious choice to pollute 2 square miles of land in exchange for relative prosperity?
I think we should butt out. They're recycling old computers and selling the gold that will make new computers. that's fine with me.
Where do you get these numbers? How do you determine how likely a person is to be convinced of guilt.
The cop who passed Oswald in the hallway was accompanied by an employee. The employee identified Oswald as a fellow employee. The cop was looking for someone out of place, and hearing that Oswald was supposed to be there was enough for him to continue his search. How is that a 1 in 100 chance? I can't think of one off the top of my head, but there have been studies done that show if people believe you are supposed to be in a place or be an official, they will accept you as being in that position.
The real reason you don't believe it is because the concepts are fantastical. They are non-ordinary occurrences. Presidential assassinations are never ordinary. Think of how much chance we encounter every day in our lives. What are the chances I'll catch my bus on my way to work? What are the chances that I'll run down the stairs in 90 seconds? What are the chances that a timeline, provided by people who didn't have synchronized watches, would even make it so sure that Oswald had '90' seconds?
The chances are reversed. It is highly more likely that Oswald did the shooting given the evidence than it is that thousands of people were involved in a huge coverup to make LBJ president.
#1: you say the evidence isn't good enough to know? What kind of proof do you require? Videotape? eyewitness? Since there's no such thing as a time machine, the best evidence in criminal cases comes down to either eyewitness accounts, circumstantial accounts, or evidentary. There were people who identified Oswald as eyewitnesses. There was plenty of circumstances that led one to believe Oswald committed the crime.
#2 You come to the 'one in a million' account through no known reasoning. Explain where that number comes from.
#3 This is just incorrect. There were THREE seperate investigations. The reason why the police didn't pursue heavily a full criminal investigation? They had a suspect in custody, who had been murdered. Did you view the records from the investigation at all? Do you know what processes the police, FBI, and federal agents went through?
#4 Even if this were true, motive does not prove guilt. The same statement you made could apply to Kruschev, Castro, etc. You also state that he was opposed to any investigation. If that's the case, why were there investigations during his presidency? He was the one that declared the Warren Comission.
You wrote that anyone who takes enough time looking at the evidence against Oswald. He's evidence. He worked at the schoolbook depository, a fellow employee DROVE HIM INTO WORK THAT DAY WITH A LARGE LONG PACKAGE WRAPPED IN BROWN PAPER. He was in the vicinity at the time of the shooting, Eyewitnesses identified him as the shooter in the window, Eyewitnesses identified him as the shooter of the cop afterwards. Also, Oswald attempted to assassinate General Walker a few months before he killed Kennedy.
People take comfort in comspiracy theories because it makes them think a larger force is at work (same principle religion offers), and therefore that people can't just 'snap' and kill a lot of people, like what happened in 9/11 or the Virginia Tech massacres. But people can just snap, and kill people. This victim just happened to be the president. Its not hard to believe, Regan was shot, Lincoln was shot. No Conspiracy there.
And it happens for some goods, that get moved via train up to a certain point. But it isn't the dominant form of transportation, and for good reason.
Have you ever seen freight cars being linked together? To be efficient engines usually run with ~100 freight cars. Its time consuming and that equals expensive. not to mention the sheer amounts of space it takes to have a freight yard. I lived near a freight yard. it was loud because the cars make an awful banging noise when being coupled.
Simply put, trucks require no special infrastructure for delivery or loading, and they scale up linearly, so that sending one truckload costs X, where sending two truckloads cost 2X. Sending one train usually has a minimum cost of Y, and additional freight is incrementally increasing Y (say.1Y more for every boxcar). The problem is Y is usually too large to justify small, frequent shipments.
In the transportation and fulfillment world, most of the time its easier to have small, frequent replenishment/shipment transportation rather than large, infrequent transportation. The former is what most businesses need now to move their goods. Businesses can coordinate their shipments and goods movements as-needed, and this is something that has increased traction with the digital age. Bringing down shipping costs and doing on-demand shipping is not possible using a hub-based railroad model.
Unfortunately, as much as I love the railroads, they will never be able to compete again for the kinds of things that the modern trucking industry uses. Railroads cannot afford to maintain their own rights of ways at their own expense when the trucking industry has the government to maintain their highways for them for free. Also, railroads are great at bringing large amounts of goods to centrally located places. But for smaller amounts of goods to a city a mile away from the nearest railroad junction, it doesn't make economic sense to send an engine with one boxcar to several sidings. Consider if the local Best Buy delivered its Plasma TVs and stereos to individual stores by way of freight train. You'd have to have a railroad siding behind every big-box store; and you'd have to run traffic much more frequently.
I love the railroads, but they have their place. They're great for commuters and for heavy goods like coal. They're not going to be what they once were.
Its not that hard to believe that large equipment uses electric motors. Almost all diesel railroad engines end up powering generators that run huge electric motors.
There is also once they make the switch to independently powered wheels (an electric motor built into the wheel) you could have much more interesting steering suspension options since there would be no drive shafts getting in the way.
Motors directly on wheels will never happen because of the principle of unsprung weight. The more unsprung weight a vehicle adds (the more weight below the suspension components, such as brakes, tires, rims, etc), the worse it handles. Even 30 pounds of unsprung weight adds a huge driving performance penalty. That's why you see even cheap cars now come with aluminum wheels instead of steel wheels, to help shave the weight off of unsprung weight.
The 'queue up' time that I experience and many other experience is not at the software level. Its either the hardware level or the network level. Every command that is performed through the Motorola box, every single remote button press that is received by the box, is recorded back into large databases. Comcast gets at least 20 million rows of data a day from its boxes, and that's just the Video-On-Demand activity. That's about 240 transactions per second. When a ton of people are doing interactive cable things, it hammers their equipment. So its probably a failure to gracefully handle a timeout or network latency.
I don't think its the monopoly that drives up cost. Granted, if E-Ink is a patented item, the only one company can use their methods to make a e-paper type display. But it would be to the company's advantage to drive DOWN the cost, in order to make sales of the stuff ubiquitous, and get more out of their patent.
My theory is that the manufacturing process is most likely the thing that is most expensive. Not only that, but the major competitor to these displays are standard LCD displays. When faced with buying an E-ink version and a regular version of a display, the order of magnitude cost difference will drive many businesses to the regular display. What E-ink needs is a 'killer app' in order to drive up demand and spur manufacturing cost decreases through mass production.
Why does everyone focus on graphics as the only feature for next-gen platforms?
Nextgens like xbox360 and PS3 have more processing power and memory, which allows them to do more advanced AI functionality. Also, more performance means that developers can spend less time tweaking the game for the console, and more time releasing the actual game(s).
Also, Wii lacks what PS3 and Xbox360 really excel at, which is online play (well, xbox360 anyways). Granted, the Wii is fun, but who plays Wii sports at home by themselves?
Eventually, with any luck, Comcast will get rid of the coax 'last mile' and bring the fiber straight into the home. Its a huge infrastructure change, but it eventually will happen.
A few years back the cable industry was essentially broken. It was a large analog signal network with repeaters and too much physical plant to support. Not only that, but the cable lines were unreliable and noisy. Comcast and a few others got smart and overhauled their entire networks , at great cost. They built major fiber optic loop networks around their coverage areas, and reduced the number of analog head ends. This allowed them to do things like get rid of tape-based insertion of local advertising and now they essentially stream the feed from the networks over their fiber network to waystations, where it is run on coax into to your home. on the back of that network comes about 100 analog channels (each analog channel takes up the space for four or more digital channels), 300+ digital channels, upstream and downstream internet access, and digital phone service.
Basically, if they eliminate the coax travel they can send the entire signal on the fiber network, which would rival the FiOS service.
I think the FiOS service doesn't have to do things like send any analog television, nor hold up to any local television contracts with local towns (your local town's contract for public access might demand 10 analog channels with specific numbers, eating up bandwidth and requiring analog distribution). So Comcast and others are using this DOCSIS 3.0 to delay an inevitable infrastructure change.
How do you make a lifestyle choice the 'path of least resistance'? the way modern governments have done it is by using their police power to make the alternatives to the desired effect illegal. Essentially, make the alternatives (high volume flushing toilets, soon to be incandescent lights) illegal and you'll find that going to jail is a path to the MOST resistance.
When we create software it is pretty easy to engineer a default behavior. When we create people its not (and should not be) so easy.
Why does it have to be one or the other? I have found there are situations where one or the other is called for.
For indoor lighting and accent lighting, I use traditional bulbs
For hard to change and frequently used lights/always on, I used CFL
I have traditional bulbs in my house(overhead fixtures and lamps), but my closet lights are CFL. Also the always on lights in the condo's hallways and the porch/entrance lights are CFL. This saves our condo association money in energy bills, and means we don't have to break out the ladder as often.
I suspect the 'one or the other' mentality comes from those people who are looking to make illegal the sale of traditional bulbs.
To increase bandwidth, cable companies used to have dual channel setups over analog cable (before digital). They used to have 'A/B' switches on the boxes and you could access double the amount of channels.
...but we're also the only creature which will pollute our own drinking water, our own air and poison our own food.
I am absolutely tired of this self-loathing that humanity has assumed. It is time it stopped. No animal has ever built rockets and blasted off the moon, either. Humanity is a wonderful thing. We are the only animals who are able to THINK, and therefore have the power to change our own destiny. There are probably plenty of animals who polluted, through their own biological functions, their environment. The reason we don't see them now? because they lacked thinking brains, they most likely went extinct.
I know you weren't implying all humans are stupid, but whenever someone advances the argument that humanity inherently is bad, and destroys itself through technology (which creates some pollution), then eventually people believe it and demand a return to 'pre-technology', aka, pre-science, aka pre-humans.
Except the United States has absolutely emulated the French in that we are one of the few nations in the Western world that continues to use the death penalty as a punishment for certain crimes. France abolished the death penalty in 1981.
As an aside I find it absolutely hilarious that some are advocating for killing those they disagree with. As if access to Britney Spears' music is an inalienable right that people would kill for.
The economy sucked under Carter. However, any economist worth their salt will tell you that this was an unavoidable consequence of global factors, including our exit from Viet Nam. There was also the fact that the Fed was still applying, what Greenspan would later prove to be a losing strategy for managing inflation. None of this was under Carter's control.
Well, I'm pretty sure the president appoints the members of the Federal Reserve. As president, he should have acted to reverse their course through whatever means he has as Executive in Chief. Saying their was nothing he could do is a cop-out. That's a lot like the other side saying Clinton had nothing to do with economic expansion. Presidents own their economies and have the power to right the ships, no matter how politically unpopular it is.
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I have a gut feeling one of the reasons the EU allows this is that the EU feels the relationship with the US would be damaged if they didn't. There's probably not a single nation in the EU at present that sees Iran as their Most Dangerous Enemy(tm). Everyone knows that Iran is at least 10 years away from any nuclear capabilities, including power stations, for crying out loud.
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My first comment on your statement: Just because the EU does not see Iran as their most dangerous enemy, does not mean it isn't so. What other player in that region is more unstable, more bellicose towards democracy, and has denounced nations that support Israel? (which most, if not all, European nations do.) Iran is suspected in aiding subversive groups in Afghanistan (which is a NATO/EU effort as well as a US effort) and Iraq. Iran has an active nuclear program which could be set up to create atomic weapons.( if we take suggestion from another nation with an active program a few years ago with bellicose language and a shady track record, AKA North Korea. Who did indeed go on to make atomic weapons.)
My second comment is that the UN's watchdog, probably the most authoritative voice on atomic energy and weapons production, has stated the Iran is 3-8 years from the bomb.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2087272,0
If we started saying "no" to the US, on the other hand, it could jeopardize trade and good-will with the US. In a big way, if you look at the US' track record of the last 7 years.
A larger snub was the Iraq war. France has refused participation and did a great deal of stonewalling; Aside from a small amount of 'no france' individuals; there has not been any effort by the government of the United States (other than freedom fries) to curtail our economic activity in Europe. As a parent poster noted, the EU has major purchasing power and a large number of companies in the United States do a large amount of business in the EU. I just don't see that argument as being very convincing. Also, by allowing the missiles they do alienate the Russians, losing their economic support (and they have treasure-troves of natural gas and oil.)
I appreciate your candor; but to me, the EU respects it own sovereignty. It would not allow useless or purposeless weapons to be placed on its soil, if it did not believe there is a real threat.
You seem to forget that the US has been very, very involved in weapons trading with Iraq during the wars there. Hell, they single-handedly installed Saddam Hussein's regime when they felt Khomeini had "undesirable" tendencies.
I did not forget. I however, did not at all in my post lend credibility to the United States' foreign policy at all. I think instead you assumed that because I snubbed the EU's member nations foreign policy, that I am a proponent of the US foreign policy. I am not.
You failed to address the meat of my argument, which is, if the EU does not feel that the threat that the US suggests exists, they would not allow the missiles to be placed in EU member nation territory.
You're threading on thin ice if you're trying to white-wash the US foreign policy with regards to armaments. If you want to start a character-defamation or pie-throwing contest, you'd better do it on a topic everyone's squeaky clean on.
Your statement implies that one can only denounce a foreign policy to which your own nation or all other nations does not adhere to. That's a pretty restrictive and arbitrary position to take. If that were the case, no one could criticize anyone with regards to foreign policy. The United States previously permitted slavery by law. This does not destroy my argument that any state that currently allows slavery is illegitimate. The same principle applies to the situation with Iran. The nation I live in may not have the best track record when it comes to foreign policy; but that does not stop me from analyzing and forming an opinion based on facts of a current foreign policy of another nation.
The EU ought to kick any US missile bases that do not serve our collective purposes off our territories
That's the thing. The EU has no problem snubbing the United States, as illustrated in the Iraq war, etc. If the EU did not want protection from Iran, they would not allow these interceptors.
The EU has played it close to Iran, Iraq and other questionable regimes. They have done business with them in the past. (I believe the nuclear reactors built in Iraq were of French build). Now they have to deal with the reality of a potentially nuclear-armed Terhan; They welcome any protection they can get from their shortsighted decision-making.
The Europeans preach appeasement and tolerance of illegitimate dictators; yet they're the ones most vulnerable to the whims of such people. It is to be seen if the chickens will come home to roost.
While I do believe this company was pie in the sky, saying we've never made 36,000 miles of anything is a little short-sighted. We have at least that many miles in paved road in the industrial world, and under those roads are wires, pipes, and miles of other things we've made lots of.
If enough people who adhere to the faith do it, it becomes de facto part of the faith. It was said the scripture didn't dictate holocaust denial, and I countered with a number of elements from another faith which have not been declared by scripture, yet are 'part of the faith'. Walk into a mosque in London and ask any patron if they believe in the holocaust. Ask a prayer leader. The people denying the holocaust are often Imams, who are essentially representative of the faith and its teachings.
Do you believe being anti-abortion is part of the catholic faith? I'd say so, since the leaders of the church have said it, and priests will gladly confirm the fact for you.
I believe what constitutes being 'part of the faith' are those things largely practiced and believed by a majority of the practitioners of the faith in question.
This is untrue with the advent of media. One can sift through archives and see videos of wilted and dead Holocaust victims, and bodies stacked like cordwood. There are videos of Japanese internment camps, which, while the people may look haggard and unhappy, contains no stacks of bodies. The memoirs of the Japanese victims of the internment camps do not match the brutality described in the memoirs of the Jewish survivors.
especially since their holy books etc were written long before it actually happened
A large part of Catholic doctrine is not contained in the 'official' holy books such as the bible (nowhere in the bible does it talk about a Pope, or priests, or the scapula, or the rosary), but rather by the catechism and periodic councils of priests and other leaders who every now and again 'divine' how we should dress, eat, or fuck based on 'research'.
To say that holocaust denial is not a common Islamic thread because their holy books were written before the holocaust is disingenuous. the ISLAMIC republic of iran held a large holocaust denial conference. There are about 50 videos on youtube from the MEMRI group (http://www.memri.org/) showing that on any given day, you can turn on the TV in the islamic world and hear a religious official or pseudo-academic deny the atrocities of the holocaust.
unemployment is an even greater problem than in the western world
Depends on what you mean by the 'western world'. if you mean the United States, we have a less than 5% unemployment rate, which means we are actually experiencing a labor shortage. (http://www.bls.gov/ 4.5% in April)
Instead, efforts should go in the direction of installing world-wide minimum standards in both regards...
Enforceable by whom?
Also, who are we to tell third world nations how to live? If it means that citizens can earn enough money to buy food and build capital and equity; and perhaps even scratch out a meaningful existence, don't they have a right to? What if they make a conscious choice to pollute 2 square miles of land in exchange for relative prosperity?
I think we should butt out. They're recycling old computers and selling the gold that will make new computers. that's fine with me.
#2:
Where do you get these numbers? How do you determine how likely a person is to be convinced of guilt.
The cop who passed Oswald in the hallway was accompanied by an employee. The employee identified Oswald as a fellow employee. The cop was looking for someone out of place, and hearing that Oswald was supposed to be there was enough for him to continue his search. How is that a 1 in 100 chance? I can't think of one off the top of my head, but there have been studies done that show if people believe you are supposed to be in a place or be an official, they will accept you as being in that position.
The real reason you don't believe it is because the concepts are fantastical. They are non-ordinary occurrences. Presidential assassinations are never ordinary. Think of how much chance we encounter every day in our lives. What are the chances I'll catch my bus on my way to work? What are the chances that I'll run down the stairs in 90 seconds? What are the chances that a timeline, provided by people who didn't have synchronized watches, would even make it so sure that Oswald had '90' seconds?
The chances are reversed. It is highly more likely that Oswald did the shooting given the evidence than it is that thousands of people were involved in a huge coverup to make LBJ president.
I can't understand your arguement at all.
#1: you say the evidence isn't good enough to know? What kind of proof do you require? Videotape? eyewitness? Since there's no such thing as a time machine, the best evidence in criminal cases comes down to either eyewitness accounts, circumstantial accounts, or evidentary. There were people who identified Oswald as eyewitnesses. There was plenty of circumstances that led one to believe Oswald committed the crime.
#2 You come to the 'one in a million' account through no known reasoning. Explain where that number comes from.
#3 This is just incorrect. There were THREE seperate investigations. The reason why the police didn't pursue heavily a full criminal investigation? They had a suspect in custody, who had been murdered. Did you view the records from the investigation at all? Do you know what processes the police, FBI, and federal agents went through?
#4 Even if this were true, motive does not prove guilt. The same statement you made could apply to Kruschev, Castro, etc. You also state that he was opposed to any investigation. If that's the case, why were there investigations during his presidency? He was the one that declared the Warren Comission.
You wrote that anyone who takes enough time looking at the evidence against Oswald. He's evidence. He worked at the schoolbook depository, a fellow employee DROVE HIM INTO WORK THAT DAY WITH A LARGE LONG PACKAGE WRAPPED IN BROWN PAPER. He was in the vicinity at the time of the shooting, Eyewitnesses identified him as the shooter in the window, Eyewitnesses identified him as the shooter of the cop afterwards. Also, Oswald attempted to assassinate General Walker a few months before he killed Kennedy.
People take comfort in comspiracy theories because it makes them think a larger force is at work (same principle religion offers), and therefore that people can't just 'snap' and kill a lot of people, like what happened in 9/11 or the Virginia Tech massacres. But people can just snap, and kill people. This victim just happened to be the president. Its not hard to believe, Regan was shot, Lincoln was shot. No Conspiracy there.
What you're dancing around is called 'intermodal' transport.
r ansport
.1Y more for every boxcar). The problem is Y is usually too large to justify small, frequent shipments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_freight_t
And it happens for some goods, that get moved via train up to a certain point. But it isn't the dominant form of transportation, and for good reason.
Have you ever seen freight cars being linked together? To be efficient engines usually run with ~100 freight cars. Its time consuming and that equals expensive. not to mention the sheer amounts of space it takes to have a freight yard. I lived near a freight yard. it was loud because the cars make an awful banging noise when being coupled.
Simply put, trucks require no special infrastructure for delivery or loading, and they scale up linearly, so that sending one truckload costs X, where sending two truckloads cost 2X. Sending one train usually has a minimum cost of Y, and additional freight is incrementally increasing Y (say
In the transportation and fulfillment world, most of the time its easier to have small, frequent replenishment/shipment transportation rather than large, infrequent transportation. The former is what most businesses need now to move their goods. Businesses can coordinate their shipments and goods movements as-needed, and this is something that has increased traction with the digital age. Bringing down shipping costs and doing on-demand shipping is not possible using a hub-based railroad model.
Unfortunately, as much as I love the railroads, they will never be able to compete again for the kinds of things that the modern trucking industry uses. Railroads cannot afford to maintain their own rights of ways at their own expense when the trucking industry has the government to maintain their highways for them for free. Also, railroads are great at bringing large amounts of goods to centrally located places. But for smaller amounts of goods to a city a mile away from the nearest railroad junction, it doesn't make economic sense to send an engine with one boxcar to several sidings. Consider if the local Best Buy delivered its Plasma TVs and stereos to individual stores by way of freight train. You'd have to have a railroad siding behind every big-box store; and you'd have to run traffic much more frequently.
I love the railroads, but they have their place. They're great for commuters and for heavy goods like coal. They're not going to be what they once were.
Its not that hard to believe that large equipment uses electric motors. Almost all diesel railroad engines end up powering generators that run huge electric motors.
. htm
http://travel.howstuffworks.com/diesel-locomotive
Basically, the larger the work that needs to be done , the better it is to have the most torque at zero RPMs. Electric motors excel at such behavior.
There is also once they make the switch to independently powered wheels (an electric motor built into the wheel) you could have much more interesting steering suspension options since there would be no drive shafts getting in the way.
Motors directly on wheels will never happen because of the principle of unsprung weight. The more unsprung weight a vehicle adds (the more weight below the suspension components, such as brakes, tires, rims, etc), the worse it handles. Even 30 pounds of unsprung weight adds a huge driving performance penalty. That's why you see even cheap cars now come with aluminum wheels instead of steel wheels, to help shave the weight off of unsprung weight.
The 'queue up' time that I experience and many other experience is not at the software level. Its either the hardware level or the network level. Every command that is performed through the Motorola box, every single remote button press that is received by the box, is recorded back into large databases. Comcast gets at least 20 million rows of data a day from its boxes, and that's just the Video-On-Demand activity. That's about 240 transactions per second. When a ton of people are doing interactive cable things, it hammers their equipment. So its probably a failure to gracefully handle a timeout or network latency.
I don't think its the monopoly that drives up cost. Granted, if E-Ink is a patented item, the only one company can use their methods to make a e-paper type display. But it would be to the company's advantage to drive DOWN the cost, in order to make sales of the stuff ubiquitous, and get more out of their patent.
My theory is that the manufacturing process is most likely the thing that is most expensive. Not only that, but the major competitor to these displays are standard LCD displays. When faced with buying an E-ink version and a regular version of a display, the order of magnitude cost difference will drive many businesses to the regular display. What E-ink needs is a 'killer app' in order to drive up demand and spur manufacturing cost decreases through mass production.
Why does everyone focus on graphics as the only feature for next-gen platforms?
Nextgens like xbox360 and PS3 have more processing power and memory, which allows them to do more advanced AI functionality. Also, more performance means that developers can spend less time tweaking the game for the console, and more time releasing the actual game(s).
Also, Wii lacks what PS3 and Xbox360 really excel at, which is online play (well, xbox360 anyways). Granted, the Wii is fun, but who plays Wii sports at home by themselves?
Eventually, with any luck, Comcast will get rid of the coax 'last mile' and bring the fiber straight into the home. Its a huge infrastructure change, but it eventually will happen.
A few years back the cable industry was essentially broken. It was a large analog signal network with repeaters and too much physical plant to support. Not only that, but the cable lines were unreliable and noisy. Comcast and a few others got smart and overhauled their entire networks , at great cost. They built major fiber optic loop networks around their coverage areas, and reduced the number of analog head ends. This allowed them to do things like get rid of tape-based insertion of local advertising and now they essentially stream the feed from the networks over their fiber network to waystations, where it is run on coax into to your home. on the back of that network comes about 100 analog channels (each analog channel takes up the space for four or more digital channels), 300+ digital channels, upstream and downstream internet access, and digital phone service.
Basically, if they eliminate the coax travel they can send the entire signal on the fiber network, which would rival the FiOS service.
I think the FiOS service doesn't have to do things like send any analog television, nor hold up to any local television contracts with local towns (your local town's contract for public access might demand 10 analog channels with specific numbers, eating up bandwidth and requiring analog distribution). So Comcast and others are using this DOCSIS 3.0 to delay an inevitable infrastructure change.
How do you make a lifestyle choice the 'path of least resistance'? the way modern governments have done it is by using their police power to make the alternatives to the desired effect illegal. Essentially, make the alternatives (high volume flushing toilets, soon to be incandescent lights) illegal and you'll find that going to jail is a path to the MOST resistance.
When we create software it is pretty easy to engineer a default behavior. When we create people its not (and should not be) so easy.
Great post. I am an atheist conservative, much the same as there are Christian Democrats or many other variations.
I have traditional bulbs in my house(overhead fixtures and lamps), but my closet lights are CFL. Also the always on lights in the condo's hallways and the porch/entrance lights are CFL. This saves our condo association money in energy bills, and means we don't have to break out the ladder as often.
I suspect the 'one or the other' mentality comes from those people who are looking to make illegal the sale of traditional bulbs.
To increase bandwidth, cable companies used to have dual channel setups over analog cable (before digital). They used to have 'A/B' switches on the boxes and you could access double the amount of channels.
I am absolutely tired of this self-loathing that humanity has assumed. It is time it stopped. No animal has ever built rockets and blasted off the moon, either. Humanity is a wonderful thing. We are the only animals who are able to THINK, and therefore have the power to change our own destiny. There are probably plenty of animals who polluted, through their own biological functions, their environment. The reason we don't see them now? because they lacked thinking brains, they most likely went extinct.
I know you weren't implying all humans are stupid, but whenever someone advances the argument that humanity inherently is bad, and destroys itself through technology (which creates some pollution), then eventually people believe it and demand a return to 'pre-technology', aka, pre-science, aka pre-humans.
Except the United States has absolutely emulated the French in that we are one of the few nations in the Western world that continues to use the death penalty as a punishment for certain crimes. France abolished the death penalty in 1981.
As an aside I find it absolutely hilarious that some are advocating for killing those they disagree with. As if access to Britney Spears' music is an inalienable right that people would kill for.
The economy sucked under Carter. However, any economist worth their salt will tell you that this was an unavoidable consequence of global factors, including our exit from Viet Nam. There was also the fact that the Fed was still applying, what Greenspan would later prove to be a losing strategy for managing inflation. None of this was under Carter's control.
Well, I'm pretty sure the president appoints the members of the Federal Reserve. As president, he should have acted to reverse their course through whatever means he has as Executive in Chief. Saying their was nothing he could do is a cop-out. That's a lot like the other side saying Clinton had nothing to do with economic expansion. Presidents own their economies and have the power to right the ships, no matter how politically unpopular it is.