While there's no doubt that the Democrats mentioned in the article are hardly acting with consumers' best interests in mind, it's laughable to believe that Republicans are going to lead the charge in the other direction as the author seems to suggest.
Sure they will. If it will help them garner more votes in the next election, they will use this as a club to beat down the Democrats. Though, you are right, neither side is really any better than the other. All our polictical system really is, is an attempt by the people to play the two sides against the middle, and hope that we end up with something at least palatable, if not good. And that is exactly where politictal commentary like this comes in (it is really a political piece). It helps to set public opinion against something that is disagreeable, and at the same time helps to present the Republicans with a perfect opportunity to slam the Democrats with it. This makes it more likely the that Republicans will take up arms on this one and probably kill it. Was either side really more moral or better than the other? No, but in the end the people won on this count because the bad bill was killed, and that is what we are after.
Ya, its a screwed up system, but its all we have at the moment, so we'd better make the best of it. The only power "We the People" have is our vote. It may not seem like much, but en masse they can be very convincing to a carrer politician.
I wonder if it would be possible to set up some sort of needs based intellegence. Insted of the rule based intellegence. For example, assign interger values to certian events. Say, Dying is -1000, Killing the player is +1000. Then add in other minor values to allow for further descision making. Being covered is say +10*%body covered. Objective failure could be rated on a scale from -1 to -1000. Each of the players possible weapons could constitute variables on the cover number, say, knife is *0, Handgun is *1, shoutgun is *2, BFG is *50. Having a team-mate is +100. And so on. Basically reduce the behavior of the montser down to a simple interger equation. Then set the rules for the monster to occasionally check this equation for a higher possible number. One might also want to set certain events to force a recalculation (e.g. Taking damage, player changeing weapon, etc.) Also, to add variability into monsters you could give them a personality, attributes such as courage, loyalty, and common sense. These could then modify the weight for the various variables. So insted of a masive rule table, it becomes a variable table, which is then run through a standard equation, I would stick to all interger mathematics to help with speed issues. This might also make a nice way to work with monsters in a level editor. You simply set the attributes of the monsters and let the math do the rest. But again, like you said, the amount of time a developer spends working on the initial setup is going to have a huge effect.
What might help this situation is if you could allow the stated monster to re-evaluate its situation during a fight. As the old addage goes, "the best laid battle plan rarely survives contact with the enemy". This is often the case with the normal FPS type monster. The monster picks a tactic, usually something along the lines of all out attack, or suppressive fire, but once the player realizes what the monster is doing the player adjusts their style of play to fit that situation, usually to devistating effect. Also, there is a bad habit of making the monsters use some really stupid tactics, I don't know how many times I have applied the old "side-slide out, fire a few rounds, and duck back" routine. This is a good routine, but normally a good player will pick up on it and either time me, or throw some sort of area-effect weapon. Also, I've noticed that there seems to be a lack of group tactics, simple rolling would be nice, not to mention the concept of cover. The point of all this is that, not only does the computer need to be given a good set of tactics to choose from, it needs the ability to re-evaluate its choosen tactics during combat. Say, every few seconds, and whenever the monster, or one of its cohorts takes a hit. I realize that this may be logistically difficult to impliment, I am not a programer, so I don't know what it would take, but it strikes me that this would be a good thing to pursue.
As for having a regionless DVD player, that is always a good thing. I recently obtained one, and am happy with the results.
As for buying or not buying the DVD, I'd say buy it, sure it gives the FOX cronies money, but it at least lets them know that this show had some interest. It goes back to the whole voting with your money idea. If they are turning a good profit on DVD sales they might give the show another go, and maybe even a fair shake this time.
Also, it might provide them with some motivation to back more shows like this one. Not buying is really just hurting yourself to be spiteful. 1. You don't get to have it. 2. FOX doesn't see money comming in from it, so they don't do more shows like it. So, buy it, its the only way to let them know that good comedy is what you watch. <rant> I just wish enough people with an IQ above 50 could get a Nielson box and finally get wresteling off the top spot in ratings. But I guess its a lost cause, the smart ones either don't watch much TV, or are too paranoid about the boxes. So we're relegated to having a bunch of backwater hicks, who are too stupid to realize wresteling is fake, making up our minds about what makes for good TV.</rant>
Was just checking out the link to Futurama Season 1 DVD, which is great if you live on that side of the Atlantic. Problem is, I can't seem to find it on the US version of Amazon. I wonder of they decided that the US audiance wouldn't want it. Course, for those of you in the UK, you might be able to fetch a few pounds by auctioning off a set or two to us underpriviliged Americans. I know I'd love to get a hold of this.
I'll confess, I haven't read the 15MB PDF... but wouldn't the device you are describing be very similar to rail gun? How are it's passengers going to withstand those sort of G forces?
Actually, you wouldn't have to worry about the forces involved bothering the passengers any more than you do on a normal roller coster. While escape velocity sits around 11 Km/s, that is for a ballistic launch. The kind where all of the acceleration happens within a very short time. This thing will be accelerating much slower. Since it can continue to exert a force of the vehcile.
Simply put, if you can make a vehicle that has a force capable of continuously producing ~9.8m/s/s acceleration upwards, it will continue at whatever speed it currently has upwards, with no acceleration or decelleration. Though as you get higher you would, technically, accelerate using this same force. As such, the elevator could accelerate at a slow rate, and probably never acheive 11Km/s, but still hit geosynchronous orbit.
My current employer, Ultrak, does exactly this sort of thing. Our Eurocorder II(PDF doc) unit is a digital video recorder unit, it is PC based and runs a version of the NetBSD OS. It is capable of up to 16 cameras per unit. And has Motion detection, and a pre-event buffer, so you can save valuable drive space by only recording actual events, and still get the whole show; or you can keep a camera going in a "live" recording state. You can also backup to CD-R by default, and have the option of reviewing previous records while the system records. Your requirements pretty much describe our product.
does this mean that you put a plate of this materal into a tub of water and it will produce hydrogen as long as there is water?
Of the two options, this is the more correct. According to the article, which was light on details, the alloy is a catalyst which, defined loosly, causes a reaction to take place but is itself not changed in the reaction. As such, in an ideal situation, you could put a lump of this stuff in a bucket of water, and assuming that you had any other nessecarry components (heat, light, electtricity, etc.) your bucket of water would eventually become a bucket of hydrogen and water, and the lump could be reused indefinatly. Though if there are other such considerations, the article did not say, it just said water, lump and light, they might limit the reaction. Anybody got a link to more info on this stuff?
Re:Security != Justice ?
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The Drone War
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· Score: 1
BTW, the US has also blocked a U.N. resolution that would have defined what IS terrorism
And as I recall, it also clearly defined Israel as a terrorist state, and so the American government fought to kill it. As for the one banning torture, I would have to read it before I accepted it as a good thing. Sure the main premise might have been to define and outlaw torture, but what other stuff did it do? If it had anthing like the silly attempt to ban land mines in it, I would be glad that the US resisted it. Which leads to the anwser to the question:
So, I guess you support the U.S.'s decision not to support the resolution that would have banned torture...does that mean that you condone the use of torture?
This is like the dumb argument that our polititians here use: Its for the kids! And if you don't support it you are hurting our kids. This is utter, illogical, bullshit. There is usually a hell of a lot more inside one of these documents than the media's tag lines. If I don't support it, it doesn't necessarally mean I am against the tag line, it means that there is something in there I don't like, which probably would do more to harm than the other bit would do good. If you want to deal with real politics, don't buy in to media tag lines.
Yes, it's great for a citizen to be able to be able to criticize the U.S. government...though if you do that right now you could possibly lose your job or be labeled a traitor...
Nope, I do this on a daily basis. And still employed and free. I won't say that we have the best government ever here. But it does at least do the basics. It serves the people, as you said, public opinion does have a lot of power and that keeps it from getting too far out of hand. It also protects its people and thier intrests, sure, its not 100% but that is impossible to achieve in a society that allows for a moderate level of freedom. As for its forgien policies, ya, some of them suck(king building, etc.). But in a world that is incresingly trying to push its beliefs on us, I'm glad to see that our govenment is willing to push back.(I like having my small arms, thank you very much. If you don't want to have them, that is your choice, leave me with mine! Also, I don't want to spend 2% of this countries GDP to maybe lower the temperature of the world 1.5C in 100 years, if human induced global warming is even true. Or if current warming is just a natural cycle.)
The important thing is that the U.S.'s foreign policy is unjust, and concerned only with American interests.
And this would be different from?... Every govenment was setup to serve its own people.(Even though the US government often likes to spend tons of money helping people from other countries out, which I don't like, we have enough problems of our own, we should fix them first.) And no government ever pleases everyone, and could be called unjust. Ya, ours has problems, and I do what little I can to fix them(vote, talk, and listen) Problem is, our government is very vocal in the world forum, and so gets decried an awful lot. But I would rather my government was called names, than have it just roll over for the UN and accept whatever world crisis they made up this week.
Sorry if that last bit seemed pointed at you, it was meant for the general populace, the ones that tend to get pissy when thier country is mentioned in bad context. I meant "you" as in the reader, not is in the person to whom I was responding. It was a bad choice of wording on my part. Again, I apologieze if I offended you(the poster).
Elcomsoft's servers were located *in* the US, so they are under US law. Software was purchased & downloaded from servers located in the US, even though Elcomsoft is located in Russia
Ok, I was not aware of this. Nor do I care much, I was simply trying to show a recent example of how international jurisdiction tends to get applied. I was not trying to say that what the DOJ, Sklyarov, or anyone else did was right or wrong. So ignoring the flawed example, point 1 should have read something like: Arrest them if they come for a visit: Much as I am sure the US government would do to the software pirates operating out of say Thailand.
As for things "most of the rest of the Slashdot crowd" doesn't seem to get: quit arguing the examples and argue the point, if there is a flaw, point it out, but don't rant for half a page on it, unless you mean to disprove the argument by it.
Yes, but I can sue you for breach of contract in MY country...barraty aside...
Granted, assuming that there is a specific person that you are delaing with, if its just that government comming after you for putting up undesireable material, your not really going to win the exchange. You get flayed by the fundimitalist govenment, and get a useless US judgement against them that the US government won't enforce, because it might piss off another puppet government.
(Quick note before you flame me for the Anti-US comment. I am an American, and our govenment did a wonderful job of getting Sadam Hussien in power. And we were kinda friendly to the Taliban when they were fighting the Soviets.)
It's simple, really. All I have to do is force entry into my website through a page that requires you to agree to an End User License Agreement, giving you license to use my website.
You are of course assuming that this sort of Click-through contract is valid in the other country. If the person looking at it is in the US, it will probably hold up, but I wouldn't be certain that it is valid elsewhere. I wonder if the Taliban would have accepted the click-through as a defense?
If anyone out there can say yea or nay to this for other countries, I would like to know.
I'm not a Laywer, so I cannot give any real legal opinions. But it would seem that we are slowly moving to a point where some sort of logical barrier will be created to enforce the geographical barriers that currently exist. Already some countries are trying out what amounts to a national firewall/proxy. Though this poses a lot of freespeech questions(though in some countries this is a non-issue), also it is a logistical nightmare. As for enforcing some sort of location tag on a webpage request this again is a logistical impossibility (imagine joe-end-user trying to set up a disallow list for every country in the world that might not like what he has to say. Also, how the hell would he know about those laws?). I do think that some day the burecrats of the world will finally figure out a way to control internet content access(at least the majority of it), though I dislike the idea as much as the next freespech advocate.
As for any legal/jusidiction issues, I don't think that many of these will be resolved easily. After-all, what country wants to give up its sovreignty over its citizens? I guess we could try and push for a world govenment/standard, but I think that this would just get lots of people killed fighting it.(If slashdot is any indicator Americans, Europeans, and Austrailians will never accept the same set of laws.)
Of course, there are questions that we are having to deal with right now(Think Skylarov, Austrailian Defamation case against US entity). Whether there was a right or a wrong to either issue is irrelevent, what is relevent, is how do we decide if a person can be brought to trial and/or punished?
I can see two ways this could go.
1. You can arrest them if they come to visit. This is what happened to Skylarov, and is roughly the way things seem to go at the moment. But taken to its logical extreme this is a good way to create isolationism. Who would want to travel if they might be arrested and convicted for an action that was legal back home, but is a crime elsewhere?
2. Let it go if it was commited outside your borders. Ok, so as long as I can prove that I wasn't in your country when I broke your encryption and started selling your program to everyone for 5 bucks, its ok. This is a great way to discourage the distribution of software outside its home country, and were back to an isolationist setup.
So what are we left with to do? International laws? Start punishing countries for allowing/disallowing things in thier country? I don't think there is going to be a nice clean answer, and whatever we go with is gonna piss off a lot of people.
While that's the way to bet, many technologies run afoul of physical law and simply *can't* improve much further.... Why 'must' LH2/LOX engines be replaced?
I think you answered your own question. Sure, they work, but I can't believe that we have hit the pinnicle of launch propulsion technology. I will grant that MagLev may not be the answer, but I still maintain that there has to be a better way.
Also, I will concede the point about automobiles, it was simply the first example that poped to mind. However, the basic principal is still valid, more research and the drive to make the better product to sell will ultimatly drive down the price, and increse effeciency.
The horse drawn carriage was not replaced by the truck. A wide variety of different kinds of horse drawn vehicles were replaced by a wide variety of internal combustion vehicles.
So we agree then, old technology was replaced by new technology. Its not the example I am arguing for, just the concept.
If there is no clear advantage, it won't be replaced. Rockets are launched in the real world, cost real money, and must be considered in the light of real economics.
And this is exactly why the research is being done
and this is why they will probably try at least some mock launches this way. NASA/JPL is willing to spend money to look into new possibilities, look at the space gun.(Link is a bit light, but gives the basic idea) Sure, they aren't going to scrap the shuttle and go full bore into an untested technology. And no one would want that, but NASA/JPL needs to keep trying now things, or we'll never find something better.
In a nutshell for emphasis: Your analysis, and others repeating the same thing, ignore one simple fact: Mag launching is *very inefficient*. It's unclear that there will be any cost savings, LH2 and LOX are fairly cheap, even reducing their costs by 50% won't affect launch costs much. Just because the energy (fuel) required in the vehicle proper is lower does not mean the total energy requirements in the system are lower.
This is true for the moment, but like most technologies, as more research is done, and the technology hits the market, it will improve. Consider the automobile, at first it was a clunky, inefficent contraption. Now, 30mpg is a pretty common number. So, much the same as the horse drawn carriage gave way to the truck, eventually H2/LOX engines must be replaced with something else, but it will happen slowly, and may not be a big (if any at all) advantage to start with.
And as for the concerns about where the electricity comes from (which seem rampat). Has anyone considered a good nuclear solution? (Not neccesarally fission!) I saw an article a while back on what amouted to a nuclear decay pile being used to heat a steam turbine. According to the article, it was both clean and scalable, which could provide a nice, on site, electricity generator for this type of launch.
You are more than capable of preparing to defend yourself without the use of semi-automatic weapons.
I don't think this statement could be any farther from the truth. How exaclty do you plan to defend yourself from an armed person? You can cower in fear, and give them what they want and hope they don't shoot you. But you cannot defend yourself.
You are also capable of preventing harm to yourself by simply following the instructions and not causing trouble.
I'll grant that the police won't shoot you if you follow the rules, but you can still be a victim. Criminals don't exactly pick out other criminals to go after.(Though I will grant that it does happen.) More likely, however, the criminals will go after the weakest, and eaisest target. (They tend to avoid things like big dogs, and armed people.)
You are far more likely to be shot by a burglar in your home if you challenge them.
Possibly, though I would like to see some real numbers on this. I tend to belive that this idea is more propaganda that science. Plus, I would like to know how many burglaries were stopped because the home owner cocked a shotgun?
Anyone who comes into your home with the intent to harm you rather than steal your possessions will have harmed you long before you have a chance to get your gun ready to fire.
This is is a silly statement, this is a matter of training and preperation. The biggest problem is that most people are unwilling to fire. If you know what you are doing, you keep the weapon either loaded or you keep the ammo close at hand. When you have a break-in, you identify your target and then shoot, you don't stop to think about it, that is where most people get stuck (simple rule, if you point it at someone, pull the trigger.) While I will grant that this could be a problem if you have untrained children in the house, this problem could be remedied if you simply teach the children to respect the weapon from an early age.(Quick antecdote: I grew up with several guns in the house, often loaded, or with the ammo close, but I knew what a gun could do, and so never created a problem.) And, if the weapon is ready, you can have it loaded, and ready to fire within seconds of the intrusion. Plus, with something like a pump-action shotgun, the sound can be enough to scare people off. Most people, in America, know what one being cocked sounds like. And they also know what one will do to someone at 3 to 5 feet(most likely range for a home engagement)
Anyone who comes into your house purely to rob you will not harm you if you don't put up a fight.
Great, so now we can all live in fear, and become easy targets for criminals. This is so ass-backwards I can't even begin to describe it. It should not be the people living in fear, it should be the criminals. And this idea of giving the criminal what they want, hoping they don't kill you, and praying that they are caught is wrong. Plus, there is no gaurentee that they won't hurt you, you could be one of the unlucky ones. However, if they are dead, they won't hurt you, and this is a 100% fact. We should be gunning the criminals down before they finish the crime.
So the pursuit of knowledge for learning's sake never enters into the picture? What a cold, bleak world most of you must live in.
I've tried this philosophy in college, I went there to learn. Problem is, the college was only there to suck my time and money. What exactly does Litature Interpretation and Perspectives in Gender have to do with Physics? And I'm sure there are those that would see the same thing in the other direction, What is a basic Physics corse going to accomplish for a Business Major?(Unless he wants to know how much work an employee is doing;) )
Now if we could just finally kill this idea of the Renaissance Man, we might be in good shape. I don't want to know about everything, I just want to be really good at my area. But unless you are in a Technical/Vocational field(and have a school for such close by), you're pretty much screwed. One shouldn't be forced to spend 3 years taking crap, that is unrelated to thier field, so that they can take 1 year of stuff that is.
My answer, don't go back, just get good, and be proud that you didn't need to sit on a silly piece of paper that only shows that you are good at eating $hit.
It can be read from up to twenty feet away. However, it's difficult to discern different signatures or how many signatures there are when the coils are in close proximity to each other.
As a follow up on this comment. I work in the Access Control Industry, and get to play with this type of technology on a daily basis.
A fun experiment for those that have to wear the proximity cards (the kind you wave at a box on the wall, which goes beep): Get two or three cards and stack them together, then wave them at the reader, it will not read them.
Moreover, to get any range out of a reader, it has to be pretty big, and sucks a ton of power. Worse yet, any metal or transformers in the area tend to screw with their range (we have a 110VAC to 12VDC 1Amp power supply that just kills any card reads withing a foot of it.)
All in all, I don't expect that one will have to worry about muggers/mechants/police reading how much you have in your wallet.
But, as a advocate of amnominity, I'll stick to my nice, hard to trace, bills.
Since the above post was brought it up (albiet in a round about way)...
The link provided: The Light Clock [btinternet.com]
Brings up the old light clock on a train scenario, however, this scenario glosses over something that I think is and important question. How is this situation created?
Ok, if we assume that such a train/rocket can exist, size being ignored. And further we ignore the need for perfect mirrors, a laser that is viewable from the side, and beam degridation. My question is, how is the laser started?
The obvious answer would be that it is fired in the 'Y' direction (assume a simple cartisiean plane 'X' vs 'Y'). But this would cause the laser to miss, as it traveled in purely the 'Y' direction with no 'X' component, the train/rocket would cause the upper mirror to move in the 'X' direction, but since the laser's velocity is unaffected by the velocity of the source, it has no velocity in the 'X' direction, and thus misses the mirror.
The next answer would be that the laser is fired at an angle such that the 'X' component of velocity would be the same as the 'X' velocity of the train/rocket. But this would mean that the 'Y' component of velocity is not c. Raising the question, what would the person inside see?
The inside person would either see the laser go in a wholy different direction than that which it was pointed in, thus allow him to know he is the one who is moving, and thus violating part of special relativity. And, at what speed would he perceive its motion? Ideally, he would see it move at c in the 'Y' direction, but would this not mean that, since the direction was affected, the apperent velocity of the laser has been changed due to the velocity of the observer?
I would love a good answer to this, its been bugging me since High School Physics.
I don't get this political system, as I am not American. How can you guys allow such an obviously flawed system to exist?
Its quite simple really, we haven't seen anything else we like.
Spekaing for myself, I see it as such:
1)Communism (I think that the USSR showed us that this idea worked as well as a lead ballon.)
2)Totalinarism (As I recall from my history classes, this is what a bunch of people died to get rid of here.)
3)Socialism (Not bad on paper, but losing 70% of my paycheck to taxes doesn't sound fun, not to mention, that most of the stories I've heard, put the social services in such states as almost completely lacking.)
4)Les Faire Capitalism(sp?)(We gave this a good go here, got us the Rockefellers, and oppresive work conditions.)
5)Pure Democrocy (Logisticlly impossible, and can easily cause oppression of the minority. Not to mention.)
That leaves us with what we have left, a corrupt, money driven govenment, with loads of self-serving representative. The only way we can control it, is by banding together as needed and giving the politicians a reason to do, or not do, something.(i.e. Small Business Association.) Its not great, but at least it forces the politicians to hide what they are doing, and lets me be responsible for my well being.
Of course, we have ended up with some bad laws, but what govenment hasn't? But at least we have a mechanisim in place to get rid of them. And failing all else, we have the ability to preform a bloody revolt, as last resort.
But this is just my view of home.
Re:Globalism == The trend towards a world culture
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Defining Globalism
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· Score: 1
The problem is I don't wan't a commen set of laws.
Especially if they are based on US laws.
Especally I don't want
1) DMCA
2) Illigal Canabis
3) US style gun laws
4) the age of drinking pushed up to 21
5) Death penalty
6) Religious laws
7) USPO style patent laws
And as a US Citizen, I agree with the initial assertion. I don't want:
1)The DCMA (it was a stupid law, but no country is perfect)
2)Illegal Canabis (ok, another bad law, I've always been for the idea of letting the stupid people kill themselves off.)
3)Non-US style gun laws (No, I don't trust my government, and I like being able to kill intruders in my home.)
4) Young drinking (I could go either way on this, just used to the US version.)
5) Lack of Death Penalty (I hate wasting my tax dollars on know parasites of society, the type of people we use this for are nothing more than parasites on society, like any other parasite you don't try to change it, you kill it.)
6)Religious laws (I don't recall having many of these at the moment. Excepting the ones that say you can pick your own, assuing it does not infringe on the rights of others.)
7)USPO style Patent laws (Again, take it or leave it, I don't care on these, as long as there is some sort of patent law around that gives the rights to the creator(s).)
All in all, I like the way things are. I have my laws, and I like most of them, though I have the power to try and get the ones I don't like changed. As for globalization, I view it as a move to make another layer of govenment to create more useless laws for us to deal with. It is simply a matter of moving the power further from the people that grant it to the govenments. If done right,it could be good, but who decides what is right, and how do the people keep it in check. If it is purely democratic, than a lot of small nations are going to get trampled on by the large nations. If its one nation one represitative, then we end up with the majority of the population getting screwed by the minority. If its based on GDP, land mass, or any other econimic factors, we get the situation we have now where the US is dominating. End result, globalization might work, but its gonna need a hell of a lot of thought going into it.
Sounds simlilar to what I have done. Coming out of high school, I loved physics, and was dead set on ending up with a BS in it, and a doctorate in Nuclear Physics, but once I hit college all the enthusiasm I had for it was sucked out. Mostly this was the fault of a particular professor, the only one that taught physics at the junior college I attended. So, after getting my AS in Math/Science (it was the closest they got) I dropped out and took a job at a company that does physical security, (Card readers, alarm systems and the like) as a computer integration tech. Love the work, hate the boss. So I'm now working on my MCSE, followed by my CCNA, and eventually, assuming that I can scrounge the money together, my DBA.
All in all, though, I would have to say that I still have a glimmer of that old love for physics, but I need to take some time off and follow other pursuits. Right now, I want to get myself in a comfortable position in life, aiming for a SysAdmin (I enjoy networks and their problems). But I plan to go back to finish up that degree some day.
Ok, so much for my life story, to the initial poster: The real world is nothing like college. College is just a bunch of useless bullsh!t and busywork. But that piece of paper at the end gets you interviews. If you can muddle through it, do it. Once you leave it all behind you'll feel better. If its just getting too thick, take some time off and work, its quite refreshing. It's tough to go back, but you can do it. And you may be better for it, plus you may be able to escape the reason that college sucked the enthusiasm out of you (different professors/classes etc.) Just keep tabs on your old flame, and it just might re-kindle itself, or, you might find a new area that you are happy with.
Now the FBI et al. can single out all those people with disenting opinions, and those who frequent web sites that are not in keeping with the american ideal. This would be great, we could stop terrorism at its source. After all, the best way to keep people from blowing stuff up, because they disagree with you, is to make sure they disappear first. It worked for Stalin, and we all know what a great leader he was. It worked for the Stasi in Soviet East Germany, and, of course, they always worked for the best interests of the East German people. Not to mention that the Stasi created jobs for about 1/3 of the East German people, it was a big job spying on the other 2/3! Let us not forget the Nazi SS while we're at it, they had a great spy network in WWII Europe. Even better, if we're going to follow thier footsteps, Hitler's Youth was a hell of an idea, get the young impressional kids to turn in thier parents. This all sounds great doesn't it?
Of course, one might say, "If you're not a criminal, you have nothing to worry about." And this, of course, is a falicy. How is this? Ok, history lesson time: Number of years back Russia was ruled by the Czars, and like most monarchies, they weren't very popular with the people. So, the people stormed the palace and gunned down the Czar and his family, and there was much rejoicing. Afterwards, a provisonal government was set up, and the people tried to figure out what to do; but it sucked and was put out on its ear. Enter Lenin, he had read this great little book called the Communist Manifisto (thank you Karl Marx). The ideas were great on paper, everyone works, everyone gets an equal share. Problem is: it just didn't work as advertised. So Lenin added a spice of capitalism to it, and we had Communism. And all in all, Lenin really did like the idea of the people living a better life, so as the above argument goes, "if you aren't a criminal, you have nothing to worry about". Now, as we all know, Lenin died, got stuffed, and put on display, some time later Stalin steps up to the top position of the USSR. Now here was a man with vision, he takes a well intentioned government, and begins spying on the people. Everybody repeat, "If you're not a criminal, you have nothing to worry about." Then he uses this information to eliminate any political opponents. (hmm, not exactly criminals.) He goes on to kill a huge amount of people before he gets old and dies, most of them for having disenting opinions.
Now, why does the idea of the FBI et al. spying on me scare the S#!^ out of me? Because even the most well intentioned of governments eventually become corrupt. And it becomes necessary to for the people to overthow that government. And the last thing we need is to have that government have easy access to the information needed to stop such an uprising. Don't get me wrong, I love America, and I don't think we are at that point yet. But, even our founding fathers knew that one day, we would need to do it.
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While there's no doubt that the Democrats mentioned in the article are hardly acting with consumers' best interests in mind, it's laughable to believe that Republicans are going to lead the charge in the other direction as the author seems to suggest.
Sure they will. If it will help them garner more votes in the next election, they will use this as a club to beat down the Democrats. Though, you are right, neither side is really any better than the other. All our polictical system really is, is an attempt by the people to play the two sides against the middle, and hope that we end up with something at least palatable, if not good. And that is exactly where politictal commentary like this comes in (it is really a political piece). It helps to set public opinion against something that is disagreeable, and at the same time helps to present the Republicans with a perfect opportunity to slam the Democrats with it. This makes it more likely the that Republicans will take up arms on this one and probably kill it. Was either side really more moral or better than the other? No, but in the end the people won on this count because the bad bill was killed, and that is what we are after.
Ya, its a screwed up system, but its all we have at the moment, so we'd better make the best of it. The only power "We the People" have is our vote. It may not seem like much, but en masse they can be very convincing to a carrer politician.
I wonder if it would be possible to set up some sort of needs based intellegence. Insted of the rule based intellegence. For example, assign interger values to certian events. Say, Dying is -1000, Killing the player is +1000. Then add in other minor values to allow for further descision making. Being covered is say +10*%body covered. Objective failure could be rated on a scale from -1 to -1000. Each of the players possible weapons could constitute variables on the cover number, say, knife is *0, Handgun is *1, shoutgun is *2, BFG is *50. Having a team-mate is +100. And so on. Basically reduce the behavior of the montser down to a simple interger equation. Then set the rules for the monster to occasionally check this equation for a higher possible number. One might also want to set certain events to force a recalculation (e.g. Taking damage, player changeing weapon, etc.) Also, to add variability into monsters you could give them a personality, attributes such as courage, loyalty, and common sense. These could then modify the weight for the various variables. So insted of a masive rule table, it becomes a variable table, which is then run through a standard equation, I would stick to all interger mathematics to help with speed issues. This might also make a nice way to work with monsters in a level editor. You simply set the attributes of the monsters and let the math do the rest. But again, like you said, the amount of time a developer spends working on the initial setup is going to have a huge effect.
What might help this situation is if you could allow the stated monster to re-evaluate its situation during a fight. As the old addage goes, "the best laid battle plan rarely survives contact with the enemy". This is often the case with the normal FPS type monster. The monster picks a tactic, usually something along the lines of all out attack, or suppressive fire, but once the player realizes what the monster is doing the player adjusts their style of play to fit that situation, usually to devistating effect. Also, there is a bad habit of making the monsters use some really stupid tactics, I don't know how many times I have applied the old "side-slide out, fire a few rounds, and duck back" routine. This is a good routine, but normally a good player will pick up on it and either time me, or throw some sort of area-effect weapon. Also, I've noticed that there seems to be a lack of group tactics, simple rolling would be nice, not to mention the concept of cover. The point of all this is that, not only does the computer need to be given a good set of tactics to choose from, it needs the ability to re-evaluate its choosen tactics during combat. Say, every few seconds, and whenever the monster, or one of its cohorts takes a hit. I realize that this may be logistically difficult to impliment, I am not a programer, so I don't know what it would take, but it strikes me that this would be a good thing to pursue.
As for having a regionless DVD player, that is always a good thing. I recently obtained one, and am happy with the results.
As for buying or not buying the DVD, I'd say buy it, sure it gives the FOX cronies money, but it at least lets them know that this show had some interest. It goes back to the whole voting with your money idea. If they are turning a good profit on DVD sales they might give the show another go, and maybe even a fair shake this time. Also, it might provide them with some motivation to back more shows like this one. Not buying is really just hurting yourself to be spiteful. 1. You don't get to have it. 2. FOX doesn't see money comming in from it, so they don't do more shows like it. So, buy it, its the only way to let them know that good comedy is what you watch. <rant> I just wish enough people with an IQ above 50 could get a Nielson box and finally get wresteling off the top spot in ratings. But I guess its a lost cause, the smart ones either don't watch much TV, or are too paranoid about the boxes. So we're relegated to having a bunch of backwater hicks, who are too stupid to realize wresteling is fake, making up our minds about what makes for good TV.</rant>
Was just checking out the link to Futurama Season 1 DVD, which is great if you live on that side of the Atlantic. Problem is, I can't seem to find it on the US version of Amazon. I wonder of they decided that the US audiance wouldn't want it. Course, for those of you in the UK, you might be able to fetch a few pounds by auctioning off a set or two to us underpriviliged Americans. I know I'd love to get a hold of this.
I'll confess, I haven't read the 15MB PDF ... but wouldn't the device you are describing be very similar to rail gun? How are it's passengers going to withstand those sort of G forces?
Actually, you wouldn't have to worry about the forces involved bothering the passengers any more than you do on a normal roller coster. While escape velocity sits around 11 Km/s, that is for a ballistic launch. The kind where all of the acceleration happens within a very short time. This thing will be accelerating much slower. Since it can continue to exert a force of the vehcile.
Simply put, if you can make a vehicle that has a force capable of continuously producing ~9.8m/s/s acceleration upwards, it will continue at whatever speed it currently has upwards, with no acceleration or decelleration. Though as you get higher you would, technically, accelerate using this same force. As such, the elevator could accelerate at a slow rate, and probably never acheive 11Km/s, but still hit geosynchronous orbit.
My current employer, Ultrak, does exactly this sort of thing. Our Eurocorder II(PDF doc) unit is a digital video recorder unit, it is PC based and runs a version of the NetBSD OS. It is capable of up to 16 cameras per unit. And has Motion detection, and a pre-event buffer, so you can save valuable drive space by only recording actual events, and still get the whole show; or you can keep a camera going in a "live" recording state. You can also backup to CD-R by default, and have the option of reviewing previous records while the system records. Your requirements pretty much describe our product.
does this mean that you put a plate of this materal into a tub of water and it will produce hydrogen as long as there is water?
Of the two options, this is the more correct. According to the article, which was light on details, the alloy is a catalyst which, defined loosly, causes a reaction to take place but is itself not changed in the reaction. As such, in an ideal situation, you could put a lump of this stuff in a bucket of water, and assuming that you had any other nessecarry components (heat, light, electtricity, etc.) your bucket of water would eventually become a bucket of hydrogen and water, and the lump could be reused indefinatly. Though if there are other such considerations, the article did not say, it just said water, lump and light, they might limit the reaction. Anybody got a link to more info on this stuff?
BTW, the US has also blocked a U.N. resolution that would have defined what IS terrorism
And as I recall, it also clearly defined Israel as a terrorist state, and so the American government fought to kill it. As for the one banning torture, I would have to read it before I accepted it as a good thing. Sure the main premise might have been to define and outlaw torture, but what other stuff did it do? If it had anthing like the silly attempt to ban land mines in it, I would be glad that the US resisted it. Which leads to the anwser to the question:
So, I guess you support the U.S.'s decision not to support the resolution that would have banned torture...does that mean that you condone the use of torture?
This is like the dumb argument that our polititians here use: Its for the kids! And if you don't support it you are hurting our kids. This is utter, illogical, bullshit. There is usually a hell of a lot more inside one of these documents than the media's tag lines. If I don't support it, it doesn't necessarally mean I am against the tag line, it means that there is something in there I don't like, which probably would do more to harm than the other bit would do good. If you want to deal with real politics, don't buy in to media tag lines.
Yes, it's great for a citizen to be able to be able to criticize the U.S. government...though if you do that right now you could possibly lose your job or be labeled a traitor...
Nope, I do this on a daily basis. And still employed and free. I won't say that we have the best government ever here. But it does at least do the basics. It serves the people, as you said, public opinion does have a lot of power and that keeps it from getting too far out of hand. It also protects its people and thier intrests, sure, its not 100% but that is impossible to achieve in a society that allows for a moderate level of freedom. As for its forgien policies, ya, some of them suck(king building, etc.). But in a world that is incresingly trying to push its beliefs on us, I'm glad to see that our govenment is willing to push back.(I like having my small arms, thank you very much. If you don't want to have them, that is your choice, leave me with mine! Also, I don't want to spend 2% of this countries GDP to maybe lower the temperature of the world 1.5C in 100 years, if human induced global warming is even true. Or if current warming is just a natural cycle.)
The important thing is that the U.S.'s foreign policy is unjust, and concerned only with American interests.
And this would be different from?... Every govenment was setup to serve its own people.(Even though the US government often likes to spend tons of money helping people from other countries out, which I don't like, we have enough problems of our own, we should fix them first.) And no government ever pleases everyone, and could be called unjust. Ya, ours has problems, and I do what little I can to fix them(vote, talk, and listen) Problem is, our government is very vocal in the world forum, and so gets decried an awful lot. But I would rather my government was called names, than have it just roll over for the UN and accept whatever world crisis they made up this week.
Sorry if that last bit seemed pointed at you, it was meant for the general populace, the ones that tend to get pissy when thier country is mentioned in bad context. I meant "you" as in the reader, not is in the person to whom I was responding. It was a bad choice of wording on my part. Again, I apologieze if I offended you(the poster).
Elcomsoft's servers were located *in* the US, so they are under US law. Software was purchased & downloaded from servers located in the US, even though Elcomsoft is located in Russia
Ok, I was not aware of this. Nor do I care much, I was simply trying to show a recent example of how international jurisdiction tends to get applied. I was not trying to say that what the DOJ, Sklyarov, or anyone else did was right or wrong. So ignoring the flawed example, point 1 should have read something like: Arrest them if they come for a visit: Much as I am sure the US government would do to the software pirates operating out of say Thailand.
As for things "most of the rest of the Slashdot crowd" doesn't seem to get: quit arguing the examples and argue the point, if there is a flaw, point it out, but don't rant for half a page on it, unless you mean to disprove the argument by it.
Yes, but I can sue you for breach of contract in MY country...barraty aside...
Granted, assuming that there is a specific person that you are delaing with, if its just that government comming after you for putting up undesireable material, your not really going to win the exchange. You get flayed by the fundimitalist govenment, and get a useless US judgement against them that the US government won't enforce, because it might piss off another puppet government.
(Quick note before you flame me for the Anti-US comment. I am an American, and our govenment did a wonderful job of getting Sadam Hussien in power. And we were kinda friendly to the Taliban when they were fighting the Soviets.)
It's simple, really. All I have to do is force entry into my website through a page that requires you to agree to an End User License Agreement, giving you license to use my website.
You are of course assuming that this sort of Click-through contract is valid in the other country. If the person looking at it is in the US, it will probably hold up, but I wouldn't be certain that it is valid elsewhere. I wonder if the Taliban would have accepted the click-through as a defense?
If anyone out there can say yea or nay to this for other countries, I would like to know.
I'm not a Laywer, so I cannot give any real legal opinions. But it would seem that we are slowly moving to a point where some sort of logical barrier will be created to enforce the geographical barriers that currently exist. Already some countries are trying out what amounts to a national firewall/proxy. Though this poses a lot of freespeech questions(though in some countries this is a non-issue), also it is a logistical nightmare. As for enforcing some sort of location tag on a webpage request this again is a logistical impossibility (imagine joe-end-user trying to set up a disallow list for every country in the world that might not like what he has to say. Also, how the hell would he know about those laws?). I do think that some day the burecrats of the world will finally figure out a way to control internet content access(at least the majority of it), though I dislike the idea as much as the next freespech advocate.
As for any legal/jusidiction issues, I don't think that many of these will be resolved easily. After-all, what country wants to give up its sovreignty over its citizens? I guess we could try and push for a world govenment/standard, but I think that this would just get lots of people killed fighting it.(If slashdot is any indicator Americans, Europeans, and Austrailians will never accept the same set of laws.)
Of course, there are questions that we are having to deal with right now(Think Skylarov, Austrailian Defamation case against US entity). Whether there was a right or a wrong to either issue is irrelevent, what is relevent, is how do we decide if a person can be brought to trial and/or punished?
I can see two ways this could go.
1. You can arrest them if they come to visit. This is what happened to Skylarov, and is roughly the way things seem to go at the moment. But taken to its logical extreme this is a good way to create isolationism. Who would want to travel if they might be arrested and convicted for an action that was legal back home, but is a crime elsewhere?
2. Let it go if it was commited outside your borders. Ok, so as long as I can prove that I wasn't in your country when I broke your encryption and started selling your program to everyone for 5 bucks, its ok. This is a great way to discourage the distribution of software outside its home country, and were back to an isolationist setup.
So what are we left with to do? International laws? Start punishing countries for allowing/disallowing things in thier country? I don't think there is going to be a nice clean answer, and whatever we go with is gonna piss off a lot of people.
While that's the way to bet, many technologies run afoul of physical law and simply *can't* improve much further....
Why 'must' LH2/LOX engines be replaced?
I think you answered your own question. Sure, they work, but I can't believe that we have hit the pinnicle of launch propulsion technology. I will grant that MagLev may not be the answer, but I still maintain that there has to be a better way.
Also, I will concede the point about automobiles, it was simply the first example that poped to mind. However, the basic principal is still valid, more research and the drive to make the better product to sell will ultimatly drive down the price, and increse effeciency.
The horse drawn carriage was not replaced by the truck. A wide variety of different kinds of horse drawn vehicles were replaced by a wide variety of internal combustion vehicles.
So we agree then, old technology was replaced by new technology. Its not the example I am arguing for, just the concept.
If there is no clear advantage, it won't be replaced. Rockets are launched in the real world, cost real money, and must be considered in the light of real economics.
And this is exactly why the research is being done and this is why they will probably try at least some mock launches this way. NASA/JPL is willing to spend money to look into new possibilities, look at the space gun.(Link is a bit light, but gives the basic idea) Sure, they aren't going to scrap the shuttle and go full bore into an untested technology. And no one would want that, but NASA/JPL needs to keep trying now things, or we'll never find something better.
In a nutshell for emphasis: Your analysis, and others repeating the same thing, ignore one simple fact: Mag launching is *very inefficient*. It's unclear that there will be any cost savings, LH2 and LOX are fairly cheap, even reducing their costs by 50% won't affect launch costs much. Just because the energy (fuel) required in the vehicle proper is lower does not mean the total energy requirements in the system are lower.
This is true for the moment, but like most technologies, as more research is done, and the technology hits the market, it will improve. Consider the automobile, at first it was a clunky, inefficent contraption. Now, 30mpg is a pretty common number. So, much the same as the horse drawn carriage gave way to the truck, eventually H2/LOX engines must be replaced with something else, but it will happen slowly, and may not be a big (if any at all) advantage to start with.
And as for the concerns about where the electricity comes from (which seem rampat). Has anyone considered a good nuclear solution? (Not neccesarally fission!) I saw an article a while back on what amouted to a nuclear decay pile being used to heat a steam turbine. According to the article, it was both clean and scalable, which could provide a nice, on site, electricity generator for this type of launch.
You are more than capable of preparing to defend yourself without the use of semi-automatic weapons.
I don't think this statement could be any farther from the truth. How exaclty do you plan to defend yourself from an armed person? You can cower in fear, and give them what they want and hope they don't shoot you. But you cannot defend yourself.
You are also capable of preventing harm to yourself by simply following the instructions and not causing trouble.
I'll grant that the police won't shoot you if you follow the rules, but you can still be a victim. Criminals don't exactly pick out other criminals to go after.(Though I will grant that it does happen.) More likely, however, the criminals will go after the weakest, and eaisest target. (They tend to avoid things like big dogs, and armed people.)
You are far more likely to be shot by a burglar in your home if you challenge them.
Possibly, though I would like to see some real numbers on this. I tend to belive that this idea is more propaganda that science. Plus, I would like to know how many burglaries were stopped because the home owner cocked a shotgun?
Anyone who comes into your home with the intent to harm you rather than steal your possessions will have harmed you long before you have a chance to get your gun ready to fire.
This is is a silly statement, this is a matter of training and preperation. The biggest problem is that most people are unwilling to fire. If you know what you are doing, you keep the weapon either loaded or you keep the ammo close at hand. When you have a break-in, you identify your target and then shoot, you don't stop to think about it, that is where most people get stuck (simple rule, if you point it at someone, pull the trigger.) While I will grant that this could be a problem if you have untrained children in the house, this problem could be remedied if you simply teach the children to respect the weapon from an early age.(Quick antecdote: I grew up with several guns in the house, often loaded, or with the ammo close, but I knew what a gun could do, and so never created a problem.) And, if the weapon is ready, you can have it loaded, and ready to fire within seconds of the intrusion. Plus, with something like a pump-action shotgun, the sound can be enough to scare people off. Most people, in America, know what one being cocked sounds like. And they also know what one will do to someone at 3 to 5 feet(most likely range for a home engagement)
Anyone who comes into your house purely to rob you will not harm you if you don't put up a fight.
Great, so now we can all live in fear, and become easy targets for criminals. This is so ass-backwards I can't even begin to describe it. It should not be the people living in fear, it should be the criminals. And this idea of giving the criminal what they want, hoping they don't kill you, and praying that they are caught is wrong. Plus, there is no gaurentee that they won't hurt you, you could be one of the unlucky ones. However, if they are dead, they won't hurt you, and this is a 100% fact. We should be gunning the criminals down before they finish the crime.
So the pursuit of knowledge for learning's sake never enters into the picture? What a cold, bleak world most of you must live in.
;) )
I've tried this philosophy in college, I went there to learn. Problem is, the college was only there to suck my time and money. What exactly does Litature Interpretation and Perspectives in Gender have to do with Physics? And I'm sure there are those that would see the same thing in the other direction, What is a basic Physics corse going to accomplish for a Business Major?(Unless he wants to know how much work an employee is doing
Now if we could just finally kill this idea of the Renaissance Man, we might be in good shape. I don't want to know about everything, I just want to be really good at my area. But unless you are in a Technical/Vocational field(and have a school for such close by), you're pretty much screwed. One shouldn't be forced to spend 3 years taking crap, that is unrelated to thier field, so that they can take 1 year of stuff that is.
My answer, don't go back, just get good, and be proud that you didn't need to sit on a silly piece of paper that only shows that you are good at eating $hit.
It can be read from up to twenty feet away. However, it's difficult to discern different signatures or how many signatures there are when the coils are in close proximity to each other.
As a follow up on this comment. I work in the Access Control Industry, and get to play with this type of technology on a daily basis.
A fun experiment for those that have to wear the proximity cards (the kind you wave at a box on the wall, which goes beep): Get two or three cards and stack them together, then wave them at the reader, it will not read them.
Moreover, to get any range out of a reader, it has to be pretty big, and sucks a ton of power.
Worse yet, any metal or transformers in the area tend to screw with their range (we have a 110VAC to 12VDC 1Amp power supply that just kills any card reads withing a foot of it.)
All in all, I don't expect that one will have to worry about muggers/mechants/police reading how much you have in your wallet.
But, as a advocate of amnominity, I'll stick to my nice, hard to trace, bills.
Since the above post was brought it up (albiet in a round about way)...
The link provided: The Light Clock [btinternet.com]
Brings up the old light clock on a train scenario, however, this scenario glosses over something that I think is and important question. How is this situation created?
Ok, if we assume that such a train/rocket can exist, size being ignored. And further we ignore the need for perfect mirrors, a laser that is viewable from the side, and beam degridation. My question is, how is the laser started?
The obvious answer would be that it is fired in the 'Y' direction (assume a simple cartisiean plane 'X' vs 'Y'). But this would cause the laser to miss, as it traveled in purely the 'Y' direction with no 'X' component, the train/rocket would cause the upper mirror to move in the 'X' direction, but since the laser's velocity is unaffected by the velocity of the source, it has no velocity in the 'X' direction, and thus misses the mirror.
The next answer would be that the laser is fired at an angle such that the 'X' component of velocity would be the same as the 'X' velocity of the train/rocket. But this would mean that the 'Y' component of velocity is not c. Raising the question, what would the person inside see?
The inside person would either see the laser go in a wholy different direction than that which it was pointed in, thus allow him to know he is the one who is moving, and thus violating part of special relativity. And, at what speed would he perceive its motion? Ideally, he would see it move at c in the 'Y' direction, but would this not mean that, since the direction was affected, the apperent velocity of the laser has been changed due to the velocity of the observer?
I would love a good answer to this, its been bugging me since High School Physics.
I don't get this political system, as I am not American. How can you guys allow such an obviously flawed system to exist?
Its quite simple really, we haven't seen anything else we like.
Spekaing for myself, I see it as such:
1)Communism (I think that the USSR showed us that this idea worked as well as a lead ballon.)
2)Totalinarism (As I recall from my history classes, this is what a bunch of people died to get rid of here.)
3)Socialism (Not bad on paper, but losing 70% of my paycheck to taxes doesn't sound fun, not to mention, that most of the stories I've heard, put the social services in such states as almost completely lacking.)
4)Les Faire Capitalism(sp?)(We gave this a good go here, got us the Rockefellers, and oppresive work conditions.)
5)Pure Democrocy (Logisticlly impossible, and can easily cause oppression of the minority. Not to mention.)
That leaves us with what we have left, a corrupt, money driven govenment, with loads of self-serving representative. The only way we can control it, is by banding together as needed and giving the politicians a reason to do, or not do, something.(i.e. Small Business Association.) Its not great, but at least it forces the politicians to hide what they are doing, and lets me be responsible for my well being.
Of course, we have ended up with some bad laws, but what govenment hasn't? But at least we have a mechanisim in place to get rid of them. And failing all else, we have the ability to preform a bloody revolt, as last resort.
But this is just my view of home.
The problem is I don't wan't a commen set of laws.
Especially if they are based on US laws.
Especally I don't want
1) DMCA
2) Illigal Canabis
3) US style gun laws
4) the age of drinking pushed up to 21
5) Death penalty
6) Religious laws
7) USPO style patent laws
And as a US Citizen, I agree with the initial assertion. I don't want:
1)The DCMA (it was a stupid law, but no country is perfect)
2)Illegal Canabis (ok, another bad law, I've always been for the idea of letting the stupid people kill themselves off.)
3)Non-US style gun laws (No, I don't trust my government, and I like being able to kill intruders in my home.)
4) Young drinking (I could go either way on this, just used to the US version.)
5) Lack of Death Penalty (I hate wasting my tax dollars on know parasites of society, the type of people we use this for are nothing more than parasites on society, like any other parasite you don't try to change it, you kill it.)
6)Religious laws (I don't recall having many of these at the moment. Excepting the ones that say you can pick your own, assuing it does not infringe on the rights of others.)
7)USPO style Patent laws (Again, take it or leave it, I don't care on these, as long as there is some sort of patent law around that gives the rights to the creator(s).)
All in all, I like the way things are. I have my laws, and I like most of them, though I have the power to try and get the ones I don't like changed. As for globalization, I view it as a move to make another layer of govenment to create more useless laws for us to deal with. It is simply a matter of moving the power further from the people that grant it to the govenments. If done right,it could be good, but who decides what is right, and how do the people keep it in check. If it is purely democratic, than a lot of small nations are going to get trampled on by the large nations. If its one nation one represitative, then we end up with the majority of the population getting screwed by the minority. If its based on GDP, land mass, or any other econimic factors, we get the situation we have now where the US is dominating. End result, globalization might work, but its gonna need a hell of a lot of thought going into it.
Doing Evil to Evil is STILL evil.
Sounds simlilar to what I have done. Coming out of high school, I loved physics, and was dead set on ending up with a BS in it, and a doctorate in Nuclear Physics, but once I hit college all the enthusiasm I had for it was sucked out. Mostly this was the fault of a particular professor, the only one that taught physics at the junior college I attended. So, after getting my AS in Math/Science (it was the closest they got) I dropped out and took a job at a company that does physical security, (Card readers, alarm systems and the like) as a computer integration tech. Love the work, hate the boss. So I'm now working on my MCSE, followed by my CCNA, and eventually, assuming that I can scrounge the money together, my DBA.
All in all, though, I would have to say that I still have a glimmer of that old love for physics, but I need to take some time off and follow other pursuits. Right now, I want to get myself in a comfortable position in life, aiming for a SysAdmin (I enjoy networks and their problems). But I plan to go back to finish up that degree some day.
Ok, so much for my life story, to the initial poster: The real world is nothing like college. College is just a bunch of useless bullsh!t and busywork. But that piece of paper at the end gets you interviews. If you can muddle through it, do it. Once you leave it all behind you'll feel better. If its just getting too thick, take some time off and work, its quite refreshing. It's tough to go back, but you can do it. And you may be better for it, plus you may be able to escape the reason that college sucked the enthusiasm out of you (different professors/classes etc.) Just keep tabs on your old flame, and it just might re-kindle itself, or, you might find a new area that you are happy with.
Now the FBI et al. can single out all those people with disenting opinions, and those who frequent web sites that are not in keeping with the american ideal. This would be great, we could stop terrorism at its source. After all, the best way to keep people from blowing stuff up, because they disagree with you, is to make sure they disappear first. It worked for Stalin, and we all know what a great leader he was. It worked for the Stasi in Soviet East Germany, and, of course, they always worked for the best interests of the East German people. Not to mention that the Stasi created jobs for about 1/3 of the East German people, it was a big job spying on the other 2/3! Let us not forget the Nazi SS while we're at it, they had a great spy network in WWII Europe. Even better, if we're going to follow thier footsteps, Hitler's Youth was a hell of an idea, get the young impressional kids to turn in thier parents. This all sounds great doesn't it?
Of course, one might say, "If you're not a criminal, you have nothing to worry about." And this, of course, is a falicy. How is this? Ok, history lesson time: Number of years back Russia was ruled by the Czars, and like most monarchies, they weren't very popular with the people. So, the people stormed the palace and gunned down the Czar and his family, and there was much rejoicing. Afterwards, a provisonal government was set up, and the people tried to figure out what to do; but it sucked and was put out on its ear. Enter Lenin, he had read this great little book called the Communist Manifisto (thank you Karl Marx). The ideas were great on paper, everyone works, everyone gets an equal share. Problem is: it just didn't work as advertised. So Lenin added a spice of capitalism to it, and we had Communism. And all in all, Lenin really did like the idea of the people living a better life, so as the above argument goes, "if you aren't a criminal, you have nothing to worry about". Now, as we all know, Lenin died, got stuffed, and put on display, some time later Stalin steps up to the top position of the USSR. Now here was a man with vision, he takes a well intentioned government, and begins spying on the people. Everybody repeat, "If you're not a criminal, you have nothing to worry about." Then he uses this information to eliminate any political opponents. (hmm, not exactly criminals.) He goes on to kill a huge amount of people before he gets old and dies, most of them for having disenting opinions.
Now, why does the idea of the FBI et al. spying on me scare the S#!^ out of me? Because even the most well intentioned of governments eventually become corrupt. And it becomes necessary to for the people to overthow that government. And the last thing we need is to have that government have easy access to the information needed to stop such an uprising. Don't get me wrong, I love America, and I don't think we are at that point yet. But, even our founding fathers knew that one day, we would need to do it.