At the risk of feeding a troll:
As the previous poster was getting at, there is nothing wrong with the label, in and of itself. The problem lies in the fact that, had the company not put that label there, any idiot could spray the Windex in his eyes, sue the company for the damage caused, and win. Windex is a glass cleaner, your eyes are not glass, therefore, keep the Windex out of your eyes. Most of us would view the previous statement as very obvious, especially if the bottle just had a label that said "irritant". But, because of the way the US court system has been working, of late, a company is forced to put a warning label on the bottle for every possible dumb-ass action a person might take with a product, for fear of being sued and having to pay huge damages.
Its more than just time zones, a lot of the news programs, in thier desire to create news, will start reporting the results of states where all of the precincts have not yet reported. Heck, in the last election, I remember seeing states results reported for states where less than 50% of the precincts had reported. Usually the news program would have that information printed in barely readable font next to the results. To me, that seems more likely to sway people that pre-election polls. People might decide to either forego voting (out of dispair or confidence), or make people change their vote. Personally, I'd like to see a restriction on voting results, where they cannot be reported until all precincts have closed (including Hawaii) and then only after all precincts within a state have reported. This would have killed some of the drama of the 2000 election, in that we would have had the first tally of every state in before Florida became such a flashpoint. Granted we would have still had the court battles and the eventual questioning of the SCOUTS stopping of recounts, but there wouldn't have been the needless drama.
Granted the article says that there is not going to be a military convoy with these boats, but I'd lay money that there will probably be either a US destroyer and/or a US sub within a mile or two of this thing at all times. Considering the paranoia that is gripping the US leadership at this time, I can't imagine that they would let that much plutonium just float along unguarded, they just wouldn't anounce it. Also, if the boat is hijacked, you can bet that the US Navy, the British Navy, and probably a few others will be all over that boat before it gets anywhere near land. I don't see any reason to worry.
A man-machine interface which provides tactile feedback to various sensing body parts is disclosed. The device employs one or more vibrotactile units, where each unit comprises a mass and a mass-moving actuator. As the mass is accelerated by the mass-moving actuator, the entire vibrotactile unit vibrates. Thus, the vibrotactile unit transmits a vibratory stimulus to the sensing body part to which it is affixed.
- From the Patent
Is it just me or does this patent sound a heck of a lot like a vibrator from the abstract?
It's going to depend on where the cable snaps. Just for the sake of argument, let us assume that it breaks just below the space platform. As the Earth rotates, it will cause the cable to rotate as well, this should cause the cable to stay straight out; however, there will be some air resistance inside the atmosphere, causing the cable's rotation to be retarded a bit, which would cause the cable to lag a bit behind the Earth in its rotation. As the cable lags further, more of the cable will end up in the atmosphere, causing more drag, acellerating the whole process.
Granted, this is just a SWAG, and someone who is willing to put the time in on the math might be able to show that the cable will just stay out there. Also, this assumes that there is a notable difference in the rate of rotation between the Earth and it's atmosphere, which could be wrong. This is/. afterall, what do you want, checked facts? Besides, mostly what I was going for in that post was to show the absurdity of the disaster scenarios put forth. If the cable won't even wrap, then that is just more evidence towards what I was aiming for.
The DoD, and much of the government is still very wasteful. This is often because of the idea of zero-balance budgeting. Having had the joy of being around the US Air-Force for much of my early life, I got to talk to a number of people who worked on squadron budgets. Basically, the goal of a squadron's budgeting is to spend as much of the budget as possible, or more (yes, this was possible, but the details are long and boring). The reason for this was that the budget you get next year depends on the amount of your budget you spend this year. If you spend 100% or 120%, you get a bigger budget next year. If you only spend 80%, your budget gets cut next year. So, what do you think most smart people did? They spent as much as possible, and often very friviously. Heck, one guy I talked to got yelled at by the squadron commander because he had worked up a budget that had them saving a bunch of money and about 25% under budget. He was forced to re-pad the budget, just to avoid being cut.
The DoD may be better than some in the government, but they still have a long way to go before they become a bastion of thriftyness. Let private companies do the space elevator, at least they will have an incentive to save money.
Spend a bit more time reading up on it. I don't have the link handy (and don't feel like looking for it), but the main idea has the "cable" as really being a long, wide ribbon of carbon nanotubes. Simply put, any that fall back to earth will fall in much the same way as paper would. It might be annoying to have all that stuff come down, but the disaster scenarios tend to be way overblown. But then, it'll probably still be used for a movie or three; afterall, when did reality ever get in the way of a movie script?
As for the Earth's rotation causing this ribbon to wrap around the Earth, this could easily be mitigated by having a cutting explosive at the base of the cable. If the cable breaks anywhere, operators fire the charge (or it self fires based on tension), and the cable drifts back to Earth.
Don't try. Or, if you have to, try to go around the thing. Realistically though, sneaking past a half decent electronic security system is going to be nigh impossible. Between door alarms, window break sensors, motions sensors, etc. you're not going to sneak onto or off a secure military base undetected, unless the gurads are being really lax and/or bought off.
A good example of this is a Sentrax unit. Basically, is a long cable that is burried in an area you want to monitor. Any time someone crosses a cable, an alarm is sent. With a properly meandering cable, and a half decent knowledge of the cable layout, and other sensors in an area, a person can be loosely tracked as they move through an area. If you'll remember back about a year or so, there was the guy who walked into part of one of the nuclear research bases, and made a big deal out of it. In the end, he was in an unsecured outlieing building, if he had really tried to penetrate the base, he would have been caught.
Truth is, electronic security has been very good for quite some time. It does have its faults; for example, if you know where to drill, and set pins to hold the cabinet tamper switches. Then, break the lock on the cabinet (not hard), and are very careful and quick with switching the alarm loop wires with the correct resistors (Big PITA), you might go undetected. Of course, this assumes that you can get close to the cabinet, which is probably behind the same type of security you want to get past by disabling it, which puts you firmly in a catch-22.
The only other method would be to hack the server remotely, and disable its ability to monitor and report alarms. Granted, this will usually send up an alarm at a monitoring station, but if done just right, and with an intamate knowledge of the software (much more than I have), this could be avoided. Also, this assumes that you can get past the networks perimiter defenses, many of which include such feature's as A) Being on an unconnected LAN, a.k.a. No internet connection. Though this is changing. Or, B) Stilling running IBM's OS/2 (Warp 3, 4 and 4.5), with IPX as the only network protocol. This is also changing, when I left the industry, OS/2 was being killed off, and the switch was being made to Windows 2000 (heck, the last TurboDOS based system that was in the field was only replaced about a year and a half ago).
In the end, getting past this stuff (without inside help) is the stuff of movies (and I still enjoy them). Trying to get past it in real life is more an exercise in futility and being arrested/shot.
Re:Noticed the trend as well
on
Steel Bolt Hacking
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· Score: 4, Informative
An interesting side effect, I'm sure one that goes with just about any skill most people don't have, is the number of times you see people in movies doing it absolutely wrong.
Boy is this true. Having worked with card-access systems for 5 years, I always chuckle at the way movie characters get past these things, and not trip any alarms in the process.
Just some notes for those people contemplating getting past a card reader.
Pulling apart the reader may trigger an alarm, not always but often enough.
Shorting the wires together will not open the lock. What it will do is A) send lots of alarms (read fails) to the guard at the security desk. B) Very possibly short out the door control and make the door locked permanitly.
From the Resident Evil movie, running a needle through a card reader will get you jack. Maybe its a good thing they just let her out.
You will never "lock in" a single digit of a PIN combination on one a electronic combination lock by running through numbers. What you will do is send through a bunch of alarms to the guard.
While cutting the wires to a door alarm will technically disable the alarm, the loss of the door loop will send through its own alarm. Those wires carry a specific resistance, if that changes an alarm is sent.
Those are about the worst offenders off the top of my head, in reality getting past an electronic lock is a pain in the ass, this is why the government/military uses them.
How is printing a receipt with a checksum of some random token (user-generated passphrase, some unique identifier of the user, etc.) + their vote choices, and allowing the user to keep that receipt a vulnerability?
<example 1>
So Bob, me and this nice, big, gentelman with the Colt.45 would like to see your receipt after you vote. Also, if you don't mind, we'd like the pass phrase you used. You see, we just want to make sure that your vote was counted for the correct candidate. Afterall, we know you would never vote for our opponent, because that would make the gentelman with the gun very upset, and he tends to shoot people when he gets upset. So remember, when you are in that polling booth, vote for the right candidate, and hurry back with that receipt, or the gentelman with the gun might just shoot you or one of your family members in a fit.
</example 1>
<example 2>
Bob, we know you haven't decided yet, so please just listen to this. If you vote for our candidate, and give us your receipt we'll give you $100.
</example 2>
This is why I unsinstalled Trendmicro's offering, plus all I wanted was an anti-virus program, not a whole security suite. It finally pissed me off while I was playing Thief 3, it would pop up its reminder to update, and crash Thief 3 (granted, any switching to the desktop would crash Thief 3). So, I uninstalled it and have been running without any sort of AV for a few weeks. I'm now downloading AVG to give it a try and see if I like it.
I think you missed the biggest support for the US dollar: oil. Last I checked OPEC pretty much requires US dollars, which means that other countries need US dollars to buy oil. As other countries buy US dollars, this props them up. Now, if OPEC was to switch to, say, the Euro, which they were considering, this would probably kill the US dollar.
I recently started doing help desk type work at a university (technically, I only work in a small part of the university, but its still the same thing). On my own desktop, I use FireFox, and have been recommending it to the students whenever they complain about spyware/adware. So far, in the 6 weeks I've been here, I've had one convert and will probably get more.
As for Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D, Hijack This!, if it weren't for these tools, I would never get anything done. Thank <insert diety here> that we actually have centrally managed anti-virus software on all of the laptops and desktops I support, otherwise I'd have probably scaled the tallest tower with a rifle by now.
Re:One, two, three, four, I declare a flame-war!
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Assault Weapons Ban
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· Score: 1
There's one point, which was missed, that is very important when considering this. One nutjob with a gun and a willingness to die to acheive his goal, is very likely to do so. To that end, if the government is becomming tyranical, with enough weapons out there, its very possible that someone will manage to kill the president or a few congressmen. To do this though, it would be best to have a powerful weapon with a large magazine, or complete suprise and damn good aim (see: Kennedy).
Part of the point of guns, isn't just for a large scale, open revolt, its also about keeping those in power just a bit afraid for their lives.
Re:the whole IP issue is invalid
on
Is IP Property?
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· Score: 1
Copyright is not a "right" in the traditional sense; it is a limitation of the rights of the rest of us, designed to encourage "science and the useful arts" by granting creators a limited monopoly on something that would, in nature, by free, as in beer. There is no natural right to own an idea. If the people of the united states wish this government-granted exclusivity minimized to a one-day monolpoly on reproduction, that's just hard cheese (not that it'll ever happen that way, what with our representatives being in the pocket of IP-dependent corps).
Define "natural right". The only rights any person has is what they can keep by force, everything else is illusionary. You don't really have a right to life, but you can stay alive as long as you can keep other people and the environment from killing you. Yes, there are some things which are commonly viewed, especially in the western world, as "natural rights", but those are just as specious as any other right which you might choose to assign to a person. The only thing that maintains any of our rights in the US is the force of the government (police), and the agreement by proxy which Americans make, which are our laws. The rights granted to a creator, under copyright laws, are just as much a right as anything else you might choose to define as a right.
Re:the whole IP issue is invalid
on
Is IP Property?
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· Score: 1
The claim is mostly inaccurate because it presupposes that the copying individual would otherwise have bought a copy from the publisher. That is occasionally true, but more often false; and when it is false, the claimed loss does not occur.
What it is presupposing is that the person should not have a copy of the covered item, without paying the applicable licensing fee. If you have a copy of a work, you should have paid the fee. Granted, this is a made-up reason, as is all reasoning behind copyright laws, but, short of abolishing copyright, this is about as good as it gets. On the other hand, once I have paid the fee to have a copy, I should be allowed to create backups, and the like to protect the work, as it is unfair to force a person to pay more than once to have a copy of something, due to physical media limitations.
The claim is partly misleading because the word "loss" suggests events of a very different nature--events in which something they have is taken away from them. For example, if the bookstore's stock of books were burned, or if the money in the register got torn up, that would really be a "loss." We generally agree it is wrong to do these things to other people. But when your friend avoids the need to buy a copy of a book, the bookstore and the publisher do not lose anything they had. A more fitting description would be that the bookstore and publisher get less income than they might have got. The same consequence can result if your friend decides to play bridge instead of reading a book. In a free market system, no business is entitled to cry "foul" just because a potential customer chooses not to deal with them.
The "loss" in this case is the fee that should have paid to have a copy of the work. If a person plays bridge, insted of accessing a copyrighted work, they have not accessed that work, and as such, there is no reason to owe a fee. If the person, insted decides to access a copyrighted work, they should pay for that access. If there are competing versions of a work, the person should still pay for access to the version he decides to access. Granted, the word "loss" is probably a bad term to use, as it implies physical deprivation, which is not the case. Perhaps it should be that a person suffered "unpaid use" of a copyright. The fact still remains, the copyright holder should have been paid for a copy of a work, and wasn't.
The claim is begging the question because the idea of "loss" is based on the assumption that the publisher "should have" got paid. That is based on the assumption that copyright exists and prohibits individual copying. But that is just the issue at hand: what should copyright cover? If the public decides it can share copies, then the publisher is not entitled to expect to be paid for each copy, and so cannot claim there is a "loss" when it is not. In other words, the "loss" comes from the copyright system; it is not an inherent part of copying. Copying in itself hurts no one.
Speaking of begging the question, you make the claim If the public decides it can share copies, then the publisher is not entitled to expect to be paid for each copy, and so cannot claim there is a "loss" when it is not.
This begs the question of whether the majority has the right to dictate to the minority? This situation has long been recognized as the biggest problem with pure democracy, the "Tyranay of the Majority" as its usually called. Is it always right for the larger group to force its will on the smaller group? In fact, the framers of the constitution saw this as a bad thing, and crafted the US government to protect against it, hence the existance of the Senate, a place where even the smallest state has an equal say, and can, theoretically, keep itself from getting trounced by the majority. To throw a cliche at this, "if a million people say a stupid thing, its still a stupid thing." Copyright holders do have rights, and those shouldn't be thrown out, just because
Is this a new form of colonialism? Do we all 6.3 billion have to abide to the law of a mere 300 million?
Yes, soon the Pretorian Guard, a highly devoted team of the best US lawyers will becomming for you. You will submit to Pax Americana, or you will be crushed by the might of the US's Legionares.
Ok, in all seriousness, this sillyness will probably go on for quite a while, but at the rate the US is going it's going to follow the same path Rome took. It will be the top dog for a while, but internal corruption and decay of society will eventually lead to its collapse. I just hope I am alive long enough to see it; maybe then this country can get back on track.
The problem isn't the wind, the problem is the big objects traveling at 100+ MPH carried by said wind. Moreover, hurricanes tend to spawn tornados. One of those could do some real damage to an orbiter. Now we just have to hope that Ivan either misses Florida, or also manages to not do any damage.
The world just isn't ready for a One World Government (TM). People's values an beliefs are just too disparate to work under one legal framework. For example, consider pornography how do you intend to reconcile:
US - Fine, as long as it doesn't involve anyone under 18
Japan - Fine, but no one under 16
France/Germany - Fine, but no swastikas
Iran - Die infidel!
And this is not even one of the more contentious issues. Personally, I'm all for more, smaller, countries than we have now, the larger a government gets, and further from the governed, the less it seems able to deal with issues that affect the people beneath it. Granted, the speed of communication helps some, but I just don't think that a member of government is as sympethetic to a problem 3000 miles away, as they would be if they were right in the middle of it themselves.
And has no one experienced the incredibly annoying car alarm that says in an authoritarian voice, "STEP AWAY FROM THE CAR!" when you walk past. Yeah, right, where's my marker pen?
And here I thought I was the only one who had an over-riding urge to key the heck out of one of these cars.
I distictly recall a Cid being in FF2 (US version/numbering). He was the inventor of the airship, and joined the party. FFI, however didn't have one, unless you named one of your characters that.
Send them a question on it, via the website. If enough of their customers do this, maybe they will make a change. (I a register.com customer as well, and just sent off a question on it.)
Re:I've got mine on pre-order.
on
Port-A-Nuke
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· Score: 1
I've started to consider this possibility recently, my father was diagnosed with sleep apnea, and I wonder if it runs in the family; add to that the history of sleep walking on my mother's side, and this might explain what's going on, one of these days (nights) I'm probably going to look into some sort of sleep therapy, to see if it does anything for me. Fortunatly, mine are not very common, so I can usually deal with it.
Re:I've got mine on pre-order.
on
Port-A-Nuke
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· Score: 1
Not really, everything I have read about them basically amout to, we can give you some drugs that won't really do anything for you, but have a remote possibility of reducing frequency.
No thanks, unless there is a good chance of a drug doing something for me, forget it, I'd rather not mess with my body chemistry. In all, I've found that as long as I keep my stress levels down, and don't stay up late constantly, I tend not to have them. Also, more recently, I have had one of those Plug-in air fresheners with a light on them in the room (by accident actually, didn't know it had a light), and haven't had a recurrance since, so I think that maybe a bit of light is helpful, only time will tell.
Slashdot Mirror
At the risk of feeding a troll:
As the previous poster was getting at, there is nothing wrong with the label, in and of itself. The problem lies in the fact that, had the company not put that label there, any idiot could spray the Windex in his eyes, sue the company for the damage caused, and win. Windex is a glass cleaner, your eyes are not glass, therefore, keep the Windex out of your eyes. Most of us would view the previous statement as very obvious, especially if the bottle just had a label that said "irritant". But, because of the way the US court system has been working, of late, a company is forced to put a warning label on the bottle for every possible dumb-ass action a person might take with a product, for fear of being sued and having to pay huge damages.
Its more than just time zones, a lot of the news programs, in thier desire to create news, will start reporting the results of states where all of the precincts have not yet reported. Heck, in the last election, I remember seeing states results reported for states where less than 50% of the precincts had reported. Usually the news program would have that information printed in barely readable font next to the results. To me, that seems more likely to sway people that pre-election polls. People might decide to either forego voting (out of dispair or confidence), or make people change their vote. Personally, I'd like to see a restriction on voting results, where they cannot be reported until all precincts have closed (including Hawaii) and then only after all precincts within a state have reported. This would have killed some of the drama of the 2000 election, in that we would have had the first tally of every state in before Florida became such a flashpoint. Granted we would have still had the court battles and the eventual questioning of the SCOUTS stopping of recounts, but there wouldn't have been the needless drama.
Granted the article says that there is not going to be a military convoy with these boats, but I'd lay money that there will probably be either a US destroyer and/or a US sub within a mile or two of this thing at all times. Considering the paranoia that is gripping the US leadership at this time, I can't imagine that they would let that much plutonium just float along unguarded, they just wouldn't anounce it. Also, if the boat is hijacked, you can bet that the US Navy, the British Navy, and probably a few others will be all over that boat before it gets anywhere near land. I don't see any reason to worry.
A man-machine interface which provides tactile feedback to various sensing body parts is disclosed. The device employs one or more vibrotactile units, where each unit comprises a mass and a mass-moving actuator. As the mass is accelerated by the mass-moving actuator, the entire vibrotactile unit vibrates. Thus, the vibrotactile unit transmits a vibratory stimulus to the sensing body part to which it is affixed.
- From the Patent
Is it just me or does this patent sound a heck of a lot like a vibrator from the abstract?
It's going to depend on where the cable snaps. Just for the sake of argument, let us assume that it breaks just below the space platform. As the Earth rotates, it will cause the cable to rotate as well, this should cause the cable to stay straight out; however, there will be some air resistance inside the atmosphere, causing the cable's rotation to be retarded a bit, which would cause the cable to lag a bit behind the Earth in its rotation. As the cable lags further, more of the cable will end up in the atmosphere, causing more drag, acellerating the whole process. /. afterall, what do you want, checked facts? Besides, mostly what I was going for in that post was to show the absurdity of the disaster scenarios put forth. If the cable won't even wrap, then that is just more evidence towards what I was aiming for.
Granted, this is just a SWAG, and someone who is willing to put the time in on the math might be able to show that the cable will just stay out there. Also, this assumes that there is a notable difference in the rate of rotation between the Earth and it's atmosphere, which could be wrong. This is
The DoD, and much of the government is still very wasteful. This is often because of the idea of zero-balance budgeting. Having had the joy of being around the US Air-Force for much of my early life, I got to talk to a number of people who worked on squadron budgets. Basically, the goal of a squadron's budgeting is to spend as much of the budget as possible, or more (yes, this was possible, but the details are long and boring). The reason for this was that the budget you get next year depends on the amount of your budget you spend this year. If you spend 100% or 120%, you get a bigger budget next year. If you only spend 80%, your budget gets cut next year. So, what do you think most smart people did? They spent as much as possible, and often very friviously. Heck, one guy I talked to got yelled at by the squadron commander because he had worked up a budget that had them saving a bunch of money and about 25% under budget. He was forced to re-pad the budget, just to avoid being cut.
The DoD may be better than some in the government, but they still have a long way to go before they become a bastion of thriftyness. Let private companies do the space elevator, at least they will have an incentive to save money.
Spend a bit more time reading up on it. I don't have the link handy (and don't feel like looking for it), but the main idea has the "cable" as really being a long, wide ribbon of carbon nanotubes. Simply put, any that fall back to earth will fall in much the same way as paper would. It might be annoying to have all that stuff come down, but the disaster scenarios tend to be way overblown. But then, it'll probably still be used for a movie or three; afterall, when did reality ever get in the way of a movie script?
As for the Earth's rotation causing this ribbon to wrap around the Earth, this could easily be mitigated by having a cutting explosive at the base of the cable. If the cable breaks anywhere, operators fire the charge (or it self fires based on tension), and the cable drifts back to Earth.
It has to be that high to put it in a good, stable, geo-sync orbit.
Don't try. Or, if you have to, try to go around the thing. Realistically though, sneaking past a half decent electronic security system is going to be nigh impossible. Between door alarms, window break sensors, motions sensors, etc. you're not going to sneak onto or off a secure military base undetected, unless the gurads are being really lax and/or bought off.
A good example of this is a Sentrax unit. Basically, is a long cable that is burried in an area you want to monitor. Any time someone crosses a cable, an alarm is sent. With a properly meandering cable, and a half decent knowledge of the cable layout, and other sensors in an area, a person can be loosely tracked as they move through an area. If you'll remember back about a year or so, there was the guy who walked into part of one of the nuclear research bases, and made a big deal out of it. In the end, he was in an unsecured outlieing building, if he had really tried to penetrate the base, he would have been caught.
Truth is, electronic security has been very good for quite some time. It does have its faults; for example, if you know where to drill, and set pins to hold the cabinet tamper switches. Then, break the lock on the cabinet (not hard), and are very careful and quick with switching the alarm loop wires with the correct resistors (Big PITA), you might go undetected. Of course, this assumes that you can get close to the cabinet, which is probably behind the same type of security you want to get past by disabling it, which puts you firmly in a catch-22.
The only other method would be to hack the server remotely, and disable its ability to monitor and report alarms. Granted, this will usually send up an alarm at a monitoring station, but if done just right, and with an intamate knowledge of the software (much more than I have), this could be avoided. Also, this assumes that you can get past the networks perimiter defenses, many of which include such feature's as A) Being on an unconnected LAN, a.k.a. No internet connection. Though this is changing. Or, B) Stilling running IBM's OS/2 (Warp 3, 4 and 4.5), with IPX as the only network protocol. This is also changing, when I left the industry, OS/2 was being killed off, and the switch was being made to Windows 2000 (heck, the last TurboDOS based system that was in the field was only replaced about a year and a half ago).
In the end, getting past this stuff (without inside help) is the stuff of movies (and I still enjoy them). Trying to get past it in real life is more an exercise in futility and being arrested/shot.
Boy is this true. Having worked with card-access systems for 5 years, I always chuckle at the way movie characters get past these things, and not trip any alarms in the process.
Just some notes for those people contemplating getting past a card reader.
- Pulling apart the reader may trigger an alarm, not always but often enough.
- Shorting the wires together will not open the lock. What it will do is A) send lots of alarms (read fails) to the guard at the security desk. B) Very possibly short out the door control and make the door locked permanitly.
- From the Resident Evil movie, running a needle through a card reader will get you jack. Maybe its a good thing they just let her out.
- You will never "lock in" a single digit of a PIN combination on one a electronic combination lock by running through numbers. What you will do is send through a bunch of alarms to the guard.
- While cutting the wires to a door alarm will technically disable the alarm, the loss of the door loop will send through its own alarm. Those wires carry a specific resistance, if that changes an alarm is sent.
Those are about the worst offenders off the top of my head, in reality getting past an electronic lock is a pain in the ass, this is why the government/military uses them.How is printing a receipt with a checksum of some random token (user-generated passphrase, some unique identifier of the user, etc.) + their vote choices, and allowing the user to keep that receipt a vulnerability?
.45 would like to see your receipt after you vote. Also, if you don't mind, we'd like the pass phrase you used. You see, we just want to make sure that your vote was counted for the correct candidate. Afterall, we know you would never vote for our opponent, because that would make the gentelman with the gun very upset, and he tends to shoot people when he gets upset. So remember, when you are in that polling booth, vote for the right candidate, and hurry back with that receipt, or the gentelman with the gun might just shoot you or one of your family members in a fit.
<example 1>
So Bob, me and this nice, big, gentelman with the Colt
</example 1>
<example 2>
Bob, we know you haven't decided yet, so please just listen to this. If you vote for our candidate, and give us your receipt we'll give you $100.
</example 2>
This is why I unsinstalled Trendmicro's offering, plus all I wanted was an anti-virus program, not a whole security suite. It finally pissed me off while I was playing Thief 3, it would pop up its reminder to update, and crash Thief 3 (granted, any switching to the desktop would crash Thief 3). So, I uninstalled it and have been running without any sort of AV for a few weeks. I'm now downloading AVG to give it a try and see if I like it.
I think you missed the biggest support for the US dollar: oil. Last I checked OPEC pretty much requires US dollars, which means that other countries need US dollars to buy oil. As other countries buy US dollars, this props them up. Now, if OPEC was to switch to, say, the Euro, which they were considering, this would probably kill the US dollar.
I recently started doing help desk type work at a university (technically, I only work in a small part of the university, but its still the same thing). On my own desktop, I use FireFox, and have been recommending it to the students whenever they complain about spyware/adware. So far, in the 6 weeks I've been here, I've had one convert and will probably get more.
As for Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D, Hijack This!, if it weren't for these tools, I would never get anything done. Thank <insert diety here> that we actually have centrally managed anti-virus software on all of the laptops and desktops I support, otherwise I'd have probably scaled the tallest tower with a rifle by now.
There's one point, which was missed, that is very important when considering this. One nutjob with a gun and a willingness to die to acheive his goal, is very likely to do so. To that end, if the government is becomming tyranical, with enough weapons out there, its very possible that someone will manage to kill the president or a few congressmen. To do this though, it would be best to have a powerful weapon with a large magazine, or complete suprise and damn good aim (see: Kennedy).
Part of the point of guns, isn't just for a large scale, open revolt, its also about keeping those in power just a bit afraid for their lives.
Copyright is not a "right" in the traditional sense; it is a limitation of the rights of the rest of us, designed to encourage "science and the useful arts" by granting creators a limited monopoly on something that would, in nature, by free, as in beer. There is no natural right to own an idea. If the people of the united states wish this government-granted exclusivity minimized to a one-day monolpoly on reproduction, that's just hard cheese (not that it'll ever happen that way, what with our representatives being in the pocket of IP-dependent corps).
Define "natural right". The only rights any person has is what they can keep by force, everything else is illusionary. You don't really have a right to life, but you can stay alive as long as you can keep other people and the environment from killing you. Yes, there are some things which are commonly viewed, especially in the western world, as "natural rights", but those are just as specious as any other right which you might choose to assign to a person. The only thing that maintains any of our rights in the US is the force of the government (police), and the agreement by proxy which Americans make, which are our laws. The rights granted to a creator, under copyright laws, are just as much a right as anything else you might choose to define as a right.
What it is presupposing is that the person should not have a copy of the covered item, without paying the applicable licensing fee. If you have a copy of a work, you should have paid the fee. Granted, this is a made-up reason, as is all reasoning behind copyright laws, but, short of abolishing copyright, this is about as good as it gets. On the other hand, once I have paid the fee to have a copy, I should be allowed to create backups, and the like to protect the work, as it is unfair to force a person to pay more than once to have a copy of something, due to physical media limitations.
The "loss" in this case is the fee that should have paid to have a copy of the work. If a person plays bridge, insted of accessing a copyrighted work, they have not accessed that work, and as such, there is no reason to owe a fee. If the person, insted decides to access a copyrighted work, they should pay for that access. If there are competing versions of a work, the person should still pay for access to the version he decides to access. Granted, the word "loss" is probably a bad term to use, as it implies physical deprivation, which is not the case. Perhaps it should be that a person suffered "unpaid use" of a copyright. The fact still remains, the copyright holder should have been paid for a copy of a work, and wasn't.
Speaking of begging the question, you make the claim
If the public decides it can share copies, then the publisher is not entitled to expect to be paid for each copy, and so cannot claim there is a "loss" when it is not.
This begs the question of whether the majority has the right to dictate to the minority? This situation has long been recognized as the biggest problem with pure democracy, the "Tyranay of the Majority" as its usually called. Is it always right for the larger group to force its will on the smaller group? In fact, the framers of the constitution saw this as a bad thing, and crafted the US government to protect against it, hence the existance of the Senate, a place where even the smallest state has an equal say, and can, theoretically, keep itself from getting trounced by the majority. To throw a cliche at this, "if a million people say a stupid thing, its still a stupid thing." Copyright holders do have rights, and those shouldn't be thrown out, just because
Is this a new form of colonialism? Do we all 6.3 billion have to abide to the law of a mere 300 million?
Yes, soon the Pretorian Guard, a highly devoted team of the best US lawyers will becomming for you. You will submit to Pax Americana, or you will be crushed by the might of the US's Legionares.
Ok, in all seriousness, this sillyness will probably go on for quite a while, but at the rate the US is going it's going to follow the same path Rome took. It will be the top dog for a while, but internal corruption and decay of society will eventually lead to its collapse. I just hope I am alive long enough to see it; maybe then this country can get back on track.
The problem isn't the wind, the problem is the big objects traveling at 100+ MPH carried by said wind. Moreover, hurricanes tend to spawn tornados. One of those could do some real damage to an orbiter. Now we just have to hope that Ivan either misses Florida, or also manages to not do any damage.
- US - Fine, as long as it doesn't involve anyone under 18
- Japan - Fine, but no one under 16
- France/Germany - Fine, but no swastikas
- Iran - Die infidel!
And this is not even one of the more contentious issues. Personally, I'm all for more, smaller, countries than we have now, the larger a government gets, and further from the governed, the less it seems able to deal with issues that affect the people beneath it. Granted, the speed of communication helps some, but I just don't think that a member of government is as sympethetic to a problem 3000 miles away, as they would be if they were right in the middle of it themselves.And has no one experienced the incredibly annoying car alarm that says in an authoritarian voice, "STEP AWAY FROM THE CAR!" when you walk past. Yeah, right, where's my marker pen?
And here I thought I was the only one who had an over-riding urge to key the heck out of one of these cars.
I distictly recall a Cid being in FF2 (US version/numbering). He was the inventor of the airship, and joined the party. FFI, however didn't have one, unless you named one of your characters that.
Send them a question on it, via the website. If enough of their customers do this, maybe they will make a change. (I a register.com customer as well, and just sent off a question on it.)
I've started to consider this possibility recently, my father was diagnosed with sleep apnea, and I wonder if it runs in the family; add to that the history of sleep walking on my mother's side, and this might explain what's going on, one of these days (nights) I'm probably going to look into some sort of sleep therapy, to see if it does anything for me. Fortunatly, mine are not very common, so I can usually deal with it.
Not really, everything I have read about them basically amout to, we can give you some drugs that won't really do anything for you, but have a remote possibility of reducing frequency.
No thanks, unless there is a good chance of a drug doing something for me, forget it, I'd rather not mess with my body chemistry. In all, I've found that as long as I keep my stress levels down, and don't stay up late constantly, I tend not to have them. Also, more recently, I have had one of those Plug-in air fresheners with a light on them in the room (by accident actually, didn't know it had a light), and haven't had a recurrance since, so I think that maybe a bit of light is helpful, only time will tell.