For some reason I typed habeas corpus when I meant ex post facto. They can't be tried for actions done before the law passed, that is of course provided that they quit the company before the US law passed.
For those of you screaming that the US is engaged in trade protection because they don't outlaw gambling completely I would like to point out a few things. The US is a republic composed of individual states which have more power and authority than our federal government. As a result of this 99% of all the vices (gambling, alcohol, etc..) are controlled at the state level. What this means is that in the US there are certain localities that have approved gambling, but many others (in fact the majority of the country) that doesn't allow it (much like alcohol, yes there are dry counties in the US).
As a result of trying to maintain state harmony, US federal laws have long held the position that gambling by wire is Illegal. This current law is just an extension of that long historic policy (existing since the days of the telegraph). Not only is this to appease the states and localities that don't allow gambling but it's also because gambling draws organized crime, and without heavy regulation (and even with it in some cases) cheating by the casinos becomes the norm.
So contrary to what you may think, if online gambling were legal in the US it would be absolutely dominated by the large corporations that run the casinos in Vegas. These casinos would JUMP at the chance to be involved in online gambling if they could (as 10 years ago they tried quite extensively to lobby congress to allow it), so any lobbying by the industry now is simply to allow a fair playground of enforcement of the US gambling by wire laws that already exist. Regulation of an enterprise historically and currently used as the single largest source of illegal money laundering isn't a bad thing, and you will have trouble getting sympathy from any significant percentage of US citizens who are bombarded by stories of lives destroyed by gambling addictions. And really, much like any crime, if you market your crime to citizens of another country and knowingly break that countries laws you need to be careful where you travel. For example, if I was going to go to China I wouldn't want to have ever been tied to anti-china activity as it would likely get me arrested. As another example, lets consider the south American drug lords, they don't bring drugs into the US personally nor do they in some cases do anything illegal in their own countries (at least that they are willing to prosecute them for), but many are sought for extradition to the US because they engage in an activity that creates crime in the US. In reality this is no different, as gambling online is unequivocally illegal in the US, but there are corporations and casinos engaged in actively breaking US law. Much like the drug lords they will pursue them for creating the market to violate US law although I doubt they will seek extradition of anyone.
Lets just be clear, it had nothing to do with Britain dominating the industry, it had everything to do with preserving the current laws by adapting them to the internet. The industry is a victim of it's own success, had it remained small there might have never been action by the US congress, and the FBI wouldn't be trying to make an example of someone to try to scare the rest of the industry into not being active participants in the breaking of US law.
Finally, it's apparent whoever arrested them didn't really know what was going on. They couldn't bring a case against the men simply for the fact that it would violate habeas corpus. With no current active role in the company (if true) their case won't go past the preliminary hearing.
The worst aspect of the global warming "policy" discussion is that we have a lot of crackpots involved. There are numerous people in this world that will tell you global warming is going to kill everyone or destroy the earth. I see it actually in local interviews with children, you see it in reply's to this article and you see it in the zealotry of the people involved.
Lets be clear about something, global warming, global climate change, whatever you want to call it isn't going to kill everyone, in fact even in the worst predictions it's not going to kill anyone directly. Sure we may have some violent storms that could potentially kill people, but weather does that anyway. Sure it might move food production zones around, it might cause some extinctions and it might trigger some wars (and even the loss of entire nations and peoples), or it could even cause massive population relocations, but it's not going to kill humanity as a whole. The planet being 6^ warmer isn't going to wipe out humanity, in fact how little we know about what it could do is the most worrying part of these predictions. For all we really know global warming could in fact make the planet MORE habitable to humans, not only improving food production but creating better climates or even eliminating deserts. The reality is we don't know what will happen, scientists like normal are reacting out of fear and saying don't change the mold until we know precisely what will happen. But lets deal with the other side, if we react too quickly we could destroy our only means of trying to stop the human initiated change, namely severe harm to economies world wide.
Second, global warming isn't going to kill all life on earth or destroy the ecosystem. What it's going to do is cause specific pressure on species that may then evolve or go extinct. The earth has had a much warmer climate, than even the worst predictions make, in the past and life on this planet will go happily along it's merry way. Really humanity doesn't have the ability to destroy life on earth, unless by some miracle we could toss the earth into the sun or split the planet in half. And short of burning the planet in the sun I doubt it would extinguish all life anyway. Anyone that says all life on earth will ever end (short of the sun going red giant and burning the planet up) doesn't have the foggiest idea how resilient life really is. Lets not forget this planet has undergone at least 5 major extinctions that wiped out in one incident 85% of all life.
I'm more worried that we could be trying to restrain natural climate change. This planet has cycles, is humanity going to try to stop the next ice age? Heck maybe we just did. But I have a feeling that if we were looking at disadvantageous natural climate change we would try to stop it. There is one thing I'm very sure of, we simply don't have enough understanding of climatology, the effects of more energy in the system or even how we can fix it not to mention how to actually control climate. We are having policy discussions about something that although we understand what is probably happening, we don't know what the consequences are nor can we say with 100% certainty that we are even correct. Climate is simply too large of a problem with too many variables to really address with our science in it's infancy.
IMO there is a much more serious problem facing this planet that has been around 60 years or more, namely overpopulation. This is the one that could cause the most global destruction, as at some point it's going to involve war. They will be large wars with the most destructive armaments in history, and we just might try that final solution again, either deliberately or accidentally.
The problem is that the entire middle east is revving up for a Sunni on Shiite fight. The press in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen, Egypt and many other Sunni states are talking extensively about the "Shiite" problem. (there are distinct similarities with Hitlers "Jewish" problem) Saudi Arabia has said publicly that if the Iraqi's don't provide more governmental control to the Sunni's they are going to start providing money and weapons to the Sunni insurgency. This stupid occupation is about to involve the entire middle east in war, a war that the American's will be caught in the middle of. This is exactly the reason Bush Sr. never took Saddam out with only 50 miles to Baghdad and an Army of 500 million on the ground.
We can't solve a border problem that has existed since the stupid British (and the league of nations) drew their arbitrary lines and created nations that were divided among three ethnic groups that have traditionally never gotten along. Iraq shouldn't exist, Syria should extend to Baghdad, Kurdistan should encompass part of Turkey and Iran (or be all part of Turkey), and Iran should have the southern half of Iraq up to Najaf.
When the civil war starts enmass, America needs to be out of there. And the stupidest thing about this is that we should have known this before we ever got involved. But Bush 2.0 was adamant about trying to kill the guy that tried to kill his daddy that the American's are up shit creek as a result.
There is a critical sentence in the article that I don't think many people are grasping. The suit doesn't provide protection to major joints. I thought the suit was pretty cool till I realized he couldn't solve the problem of covering joints and still having flexibility. This means (just like the old suits of armor) that the suit has a vulnerability at every major joint (knees, hips, elbows and shoulders). If you look at the suit you will notice he only has black fabric over his hip bones and midsection and probably the same fabric on the front of the elbows, back of the knees and under the arms. This means the suit has as many vulnerabilities as it does protections, and it no doubt causes a reduction in mobility. Even if he did make it look like the chief in Halo.
It's a cool idea but more than worthless as a full suit in battle. This isn't to say that better vests and armor couldn't be developed using his ideas if his claims are real.
You are comparing products where there is difficulty in switching. There is NOTHING stopping anyone from using Yahoo search, Microsoft Search or any of the other 100 search engines. In fact although Google is the number one search engine, they certainly don't control anywhere near what could be considered a monopoly market share. Yahoo and MSN search are both very popular, you shouldn't equate your own anecdotal experience with everyone else's usage pattern. In fact the only way you could prove they were a monopoly would be to show that they control advertising on the internet (ever heard of doubleclick), with barriers to entry to the market that would preclude competition. Anyone with a server can setup a search engine, or advertising company. As a result you would have extreme difficulty in proving that Google violated the Sherman Anti-Trust act. Also, your statement indicate that you don't know what defines a trust (or monopoly) or how courts define them. It's not illegal to have a Monopoly in the US, it's illegal to leverage that monopoly into other businesses.
Frankly, anyone who thinks for a minute the limited arms freedom we have in the country would allow the citizens to mount anything but a rouge campaign of terrorism if the military stood with the government in an attempt to establish a totalitarian state has smoked too much crack in their life. Your pistol, shotgun and Semi-auto AK-47 or AR-15 along with your neighbors in a disorganized insurgency means exactly nothing against a well trained fighting force. The Iraqi insurgency is far better armed than you (and is receiving state support) and is lucky to kill a US soldier a day while 1000's of insurgents perish every month. The right to bear arms doesn't safeguard our constitution one single iota. What safeguards our constitution is that our military supports and swears obligation to that constitution not elected leaders.
By your definition any limits on the ownership of weapons should be illegal. In fact you are advocating that there should be the ability of any citizen to purchase anti-air missiles, RPG's, Anti-tank rockets, claymore mines, anti-tank mines, C-4 and other military grade explosives, tanks, fighter jets, naval frigates. By your definition the only limit to ownership should be what the individual purchaser can afford.
If that isn't what you are advocating then you are making up your own interpretation and/or definitions. Either government has the power to limit the rights of ownership of "arms" (which includes all of the above) or they don't. There isn't some middle ground where you can say citizens can own X, but not Y because Y didn't exist at the time of the founders. You don't get to make up your own limiting definition of "arms" that only fits the items you think shouldn't be limited.
Lets face a reality, without the word regulated and Militia in the sentence there would be no limit to what people could own. But a group of Justices in the 1930's ruling on such regulation of, and control of the "Militia" (as a recognized concept from the founders time) ruled that in consideration of the words of the founders in not only the constitution, but their DEBATES (at the constitutional congress) on the amendments, and their personal writings showed that the second amendment wasn't meant to give free reign to any citizen (as editorialized in other laws of the time that restricted ownership based on sex and skin color) to own any weapon they wanted. What the court ruled is that at the time the founders didn't want the FEDERAL government to limit ownership of firearms to prevent the STATES from being able to raise a well armed and regulated militia (any study of the period of time would reveal that the militia was an obligation of white men of age at the time, and in fact many states required the ownership and maintenance of a long rifle by every white male in that class as part of that regulation of the militia). Because if the federal government had the ability to take away the individual states abilities to raise an armed force than there could be domination of the nation by a small group of northern states at the time or even a foreign invasion (as their was no national army outside wartime). For example, had the 2nd amendment not existed the Northern states would have used the federal authority they could muster, with their larger civilian populations and as a result voting power, to disarm the south and stop slavery before the Civil war ever started.
So either you believe in limits or you don't. You don't have to believe in no limits or making up your own definition of what "arms" are to support individual responsible ownership of firearms. And just because someone believes that limits are needed and supported by the framers doesn't mean that they want to take all your guns away. There is a middle ground on this issue and the only retards in the debate are ones that polarize the debate into two camps of either for or against.
Personally after having studied the framers intent and the courts previous ruling on the issue, and subsequent 60+ years of denial to hear further c
Polonium 210 is difficult to obtain from it's natural sources. In fact it's so difficult to purify that you need a full blown nuclear laboratory to separate the element. There are only a dozen labs in this world capable of extracting it. All of these labs are state controlled. So if it's very difficult to purify, can only be obtained from a limited number of state run laboratories, do you honestly believe that anyone other than a head of state could have ordered the poisoning? What about the Ukraine and the orange revolution? Yushchenko was poised by Russia, of that there is no doubt, it just didn't kill him. It obvious to me that they decided giving someone a cup of dioxin wouldn't kill them so they moved onto something that they knew would and would actually prevent an autopsy for fear of contaminating the doctors doing it.
BP (formerly British Petorleum) is one of the largest if not the largest producer of solar panels. Nearly ever other producer, if not all, are owned by subsidiaries of oil companies. Big oil has major investments in every other alternative energy prospect that is actually a viable energy source. By that I mean they move to invest in products or sources that will provide profit to the companies and are economically viable. I suggest that you actually analyze the financial statements of the Big oil companies you think are so evil and realize just how much money they throw into alternatives on the understanding that oil will NOT last forever.
You want to know what big oil will do if everything is run on fusion? Who do you think will be building those fusion plants? Who do you think will be suppling the fusible materials? I'm willing to bet you will be buying that Mr. Fusion you think will power your car (cold fusion doesn't exist) would be an Exxon Mr. Fusion. The fusible materials, that would be produced by BP or one of the other multinationals. Given that most, if not all, the solar panels are built by them that they will move to supply the energy regardless of the source, just like they continue to parrot in every single quarterly financial statement.
On and BTW, nothing is ever free. If you think energy will be "free" if humanity can make fusion successful you're a fool. As long as labor and resources have to be consumed there will always be a cost. The only free energy is sunlight, if you can find a way to plug your TV directly into the sun with no labor or materials involved then it will be free. Otherwise it's going to cost something, unless you're a communist and you think you can enslave the labor and consume materials from others without expense.
There is one simple fact, regardless of the person, their stated views, and even their voting history. If it comes down to something that the party decides is important 95% of the elected officials are going to vote along party lines. Given the current line of the republican party is tax-cut and spend, right to life regardless of how the majority of america feels about it, and the belief that we can actually win a war on terror.
In my opnion the republican party no longer represents what they did 20 years ago. It has been corrupted and swung so far to the right that the parties positions represent the views of less than 20%. For those reasons I don't feel it's wrong to vote against republicans strictly based on party, what's wrong is voting for any party just because of the party. In fact I saw my states senators and represntatives who are anti-goverment interference in family decisions (something that is an incredibly powerfull position that is probably supported by over 90% of the population in Utah) vote to interfere in the Shivo case because the party wanted them to, not because anyone in Utah thought it was right for the federal government to intervene in a private family decision, and in fact was widely condemed in the state by the LDS Church and many others.
I agree with you that you should select canidates based on their views, but there is one essential criteria as well, when the chips are down are they going to vote the party line and do you agree with that party line? Because if they vote party line and the party line is about tax-cut and spend, or government interference in your own home and medical decisions I don't want anything to do with them regardless of how they vote the rest of the time. It's those key votes that hurt america the most.
It's not difficult to see that this is aimed at two markets. The first is gamers, where you can move different aspects of the games (such as the physics, AI, graphics card support and advanced functions) to seperate cores and improve the game experience geometrically.
The second market is the server market. With virtulization built into the CPU, and multiple cores it becomes trivial for servers to run multiple OS's for different tasks and with the PCIe slots a disk subsystem that would theoretically support independent raid storage for each core and virtual OS (it would be in theory possible to have 4 independent raid subsystems based on the PCIe slots). This helps reduce the number of servers, the amount of power consumed and could significantly lower the costs of datacenters.
BP, formarly british petroluem is one of the largest if not the largest suppliers of Solar Panels on the planet. Most of the oil companies have their little branch of alternative energy that they explore.
Aha! Good point. Similarly, it is a waste of time trying to abolish world hunger, because you (apparently) cannot abolish something from existing, and people are taught how to make someone hungry, well before reaching college.
Yes, it's a different situation, but not that different. Just because we can't eliminate all nuclear weapons in the immediate future doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
Hunger does not exist for lack of food. Hunger exists for two reasons and two reasons alone, war and political instability. You don't solve hunger by providing more and more food, you stop hunger by stopping war, and political instability through force of arms or other permanet means. But I'm sure you don't like that idea, I'm sure you think that you solve hunger by provding more food to hungry people and being touchy feely sensitive with the armed bandits so that the people causing the problem can steal all the food and sell it back to some of the people you are trying to save.
It's a wonderful idea to get rid of nuclear weapons but even if everyone got rid of them someone would attempt to develop them or use another poor mans WMD, as long as the world remains as it is. Until the entire world is comprised of consumer oriented democratic countries, with a strong middle class, that respect and protect all individuals/minorities and their rights, that dream isn't possible. You can not give up the nukes until all countries are as stable and at least close to as wealthy as the West. Unfortuneatly we won't reach that point anytime soon, and given the complete lack of job creation in the arabic world (and the apparent lack of desire to create jobs of any kind) once the oil money supporting the region evaporates (probably by 2020) the goal will be unattainable.
And contrary to what the rest of the world, and in particular the whiners on slashdot, wants to believe, the US is doing more to empower and enrich the rest of the world than any other nation. The US has been exporting tens to hundereds of billions of dollars in wealth yearly to China (and trillions to the examples to follow) in an orchastated plan to raise the standard of living and prosperity of China (why do you think Clinton stopped the Repub's from taking away most favored trade status and why do you think the US gave china that status, in 1980, 20 years before europe even considered it). Just as America did with SK, Japan, Singapore, HK, Taiwan etc..) in the 40-80's. In anywhere from 5-10 years China's economy will reach the point of no longer needing mass exports to sustain their economy and 1/6 of the worlds population will be on their way to being free of poverty for good(as the trillions of dollars exported from the US will finally create a self-sustained economy) and we will move on to the next best canidate. No other nation on the planet has acted so decisively and unilaterly to this goal, even at the expense of US jobs. Giving a nation aid does little to solve the problem, giving them jobs will solve their poverty in short time.
Yea the Bush administration sucks, but the american people don't. Even now congress is going to be democratic next year and if the young people get out and vote the majority could be strong enough to shut Bush's policies down completely and bring back the honor of this wonderful country. America isn't the world's enemy, but you are probably keen to believe the words of the leadership of NK, Iran, Venezula, Syria, Sudan, etc, as you have apparently fallen for the coordinated propaganda compaign those nations are engaged in, and their top notch reputation on respect for the truth can do nothing but help that opinion I'm sure. You also probably also think Iran isn't building nuclear weapons (just like you believe like their leader does that the holocaust was greatly exagerated) and as the country that stopped contruction on the Nuke plant the US was building for them 30 years ago suddenly had a change of heart and believe that nuclear power is their salvation so they restarted const
What dope you been smoking? Half the states in the union are at will employment. That means you can be fired for ANY reason and you don't have to be told WHY you are being fired.
I'm guessing the most optimistic person in the world wrote that. First they aren't generating much power, the waste steam is a huge maintenance hassle as steam pipes either need to be made of stainless steel or something else that isn't going to rust. Second, after building it they are going to discover that they need to spend millions every year on scrubbers just to keep themselves below the EPA limits on the pollution, heavy metals and other nasty stuff from getting into the air. After doing that they will find out that their garbage fees go up astronomically as a result of the number of shutdowns due to violating said EPA standards because half the residents are throwing away toxic materials in the trash (you can ask people not to throw mercury, batteries and toxic chemicals away but they will still do it) and as a result of the damage said materials do to the scrubbers, incinerator and geration systems. And finally they will be paying to dispose of the hazerdous sludge that contains the remainder of the heavy metals and other toxic chemicals (take two household chemicals toss in a plasma arc and what will you get? millions of cominations of nasty nasty substances that can't be predicted or accounted for) that weren't belched out of the smoke stack. And if they think for a minute any roadway designer or contractor is going to use that stuff without being mandated by law they need to lay off the crack.
The fact is that you don't build roads with materials that have unknown and extremely variable properties. 50 years ago they might have used the sludge in road construction (because they didn't know better) but not now, the chemical properties could be destructive/corrosive to the roadway, cause hazardous contamination in runoff and dust, and it could range from hard durable rock like material to a bad bit of clay. We don't build roads out of trash, unless someone is paying for you to take that trash, and it's a guaranteed uniform and chemically neutral substance, like glass. But this is what happens when you let the marketing department write your article.
Our county made the mistake of building an incinerator 20 years ago, it was the worst mistake they ever made and became the biggest money suction device that has kept the county broke for the length of the factility. I bet the total cost over 20 years not including interest was double the estimated price and it would have been cheaper to ship the garbage to China at the prices being paid per ton to incinerate the garbage.
I get a kick when people post that the government can't prosecute people for gambling with the wire act. When in fact the wire act has been used to take down bookies for close to 40 years and was passed primarily to stop organized crime conducting activities like book making via telephone. The fact is that gambling is illegal in many places and using a telephone or computer to gamble is equally illegal in a LOT of places. Facilitation of gambling via the internet is going to be just as illegal and a company that is almost exclusively targeting US citizens for gambling and then the CEO flying to the US trying to influence US politics as a foreigner (which is also illegal in certain jurisidictions) isn't worried that he's going to be arrested for violating US laws?
I'd also like to point out that all you foreigners that are SHOCKED that the US is enforcing US laws wouldn't be shocked if someone selling NAZI material on the internet would be arrested in Germany (which has happened), or a US citizen selling and shipping handguns to Europe would also be arrested. Do you honestly think the guy running the pedophillia website targeting specifically French citizens isn't going to be arrested when he travels there? You're a fool and an idiot if you don't think people conducting illegal transactions in foreign countries get arrested all the time when they travel to said country. I bet I could find an example of someone that was arrested on travel to a foreign country for every nation on earth and for every action imaginable. There is nothing special about what the US doing so nor is there going to be any nation on earth that hasn't done something very similar, in fact the only thing special about it is that it's fasionable right now to attack the US.
If engineers signed off on the use of the epoxy for the panel supports then those engineers are at fault. Engineers don't hand off designs to construction crews and wipe their hands of it from then on. They have to approve changes in the design and do their own inspections of the construction to make sure it meets the design.
Almost no engineer in transportation work has ANY involvment in the construction or inspection of the work performed. That is often handled by a seperate entity with usually only the major design changes being assisted in plan preperation by the original consultant. There are expections where the same firm will handle design and inspection/field changes (almost always small jobs) but on a project the size of Boston central artery project there is a zero chance the same designers were even anywhere near the construction/inspection phase of the work.
A design doesn't end when it's signed off on. There is a construction phase. If the proper methods aren't used it's the fault of the constructor and the inspection staff. If some blogger who claims to be an inspector and rattles off a few training courses as evidence that he/she knows that nothing in the field happens as the design suggests then it's HIM/HER that isn't doing their job. The engineer relies on the inspection staff to ensure that plans and specifications are followed.
After much political hay making by Romney the conclusion (which will be reached long after Romney has moved it out of the press spotlight) is going to be that there was graft and problems in the construction and inspection and that the design was good. On east coast jobs it's almost a guarantee, especially the NE.
I refute the claim to "highway hypnosis" being a problem; having done multiple all-night driving stints trying to make it to events on time, the general straightness of the Interstate makes the road network safer (especially in bad weather) gives you much better sightlines, and saves fuel, especially with big rigs. The few exceptions to this rule can really stand your hair on end imagine coming around a corner at 70 MPH with 14,000 lbs of car hauler to find that traffic has stopped dead... yikes!
Eisenhower wasn't impressed with his ability to move through germany on the autobahn, he was impressed with the German's ability to efficiently move troops around in defense of their nation. This is a critical difference.
The straigtness was a requirement of the National Defense Highway System (as Eisenhower called it). Most people probably don't realize it but the highway system was constructed for defense of our nation to make the moving of troops and materials quick in the event someone tries to invade the US (a real possibility in the 50s).
The system had an early requirement that every 5th mile had to be straight so that it could be used as emergency runways. That requirement no longer exists for the most part, but I believe there are still stretches that the alignment can't be modified because they are crucial to defense.
Utah's Diebold machines print a readable paper trail that enters the traditional locked paper ballot box. So there is a very good way to verify results at least in Utah. This was one of the election commision's requirements when they selected the machines, a verifiable paper trail for every vote.
Really, what were the damages? What was the monetary value of the "damage" done? Did someone lose their job? Have their identity stolen? Without real damages you don't have a suit, IMO. (Real damages don't qualify as your friends laughing at you for borrowing so much money for an art history degree.) I have a hard time imagining any real damages that would be likely or did occur from this (unless someones identity was stolen then you could sue to recover expenses and damage to your credit). Although this country is lawsuit happy thinking you can sue someone for sneering at you, I just don't think you should have a case, in a situation like this, unless you have real and _measureable_ damages.
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For some reason I typed habeas corpus when I meant ex post facto. They can't be tried for actions done before the law passed, that is of course provided that they quit the company before the US law passed.
For those of you screaming that the US is engaged in trade protection because they don't outlaw gambling completely I would like to point out a few things. The US is a republic composed of individual states which have more power and authority than our federal government. As a result of this 99% of all the vices (gambling, alcohol, etc..) are controlled at the state level. What this means is that in the US there are certain localities that have approved gambling, but many others (in fact the majority of the country) that doesn't allow it (much like alcohol, yes there are dry counties in the US).
As a result of trying to maintain state harmony, US federal laws have long held the position that gambling by wire is Illegal. This current law is just an extension of that long historic policy (existing since the days of the telegraph). Not only is this to appease the states and localities that don't allow gambling but it's also because gambling draws organized crime, and without heavy regulation (and even with it in some cases) cheating by the casinos becomes the norm.
So contrary to what you may think, if online gambling were legal in the US it would be absolutely dominated by the large corporations that run the casinos in Vegas. These casinos would JUMP at the chance to be involved in online gambling if they could (as 10 years ago they tried quite extensively to lobby congress to allow it), so any lobbying by the industry now is simply to allow a fair playground of enforcement of the US gambling by wire laws that already exist. Regulation of an enterprise historically and currently used as the single largest source of illegal money laundering isn't a bad thing, and you will have trouble getting sympathy from any significant percentage of US citizens who are bombarded by stories of lives destroyed by gambling addictions. And really, much like any crime, if you market your crime to citizens of another country and knowingly break that countries laws you need to be careful where you travel. For example, if I was going to go to China I wouldn't want to have ever been tied to anti-china activity as it would likely get me arrested. As another example, lets consider the south American drug lords, they don't bring drugs into the US personally nor do they in some cases do anything illegal in their own countries (at least that they are willing to prosecute them for), but many are sought for extradition to the US because they engage in an activity that creates crime in the US. In reality this is no different, as gambling online is unequivocally illegal in the US, but there are corporations and casinos engaged in actively breaking US law. Much like the drug lords they will pursue them for creating the market to violate US law although I doubt they will seek extradition of anyone.
Lets just be clear, it had nothing to do with Britain dominating the industry, it had everything to do with preserving the current laws by adapting them to the internet. The industry is a victim of it's own success, had it remained small there might have never been action by the US congress, and the FBI wouldn't be trying to make an example of someone to try to scare the rest of the industry into not being active participants in the breaking of US law.
Finally, it's apparent whoever arrested them didn't really know what was going on. They couldn't bring a case against the men simply for the fact that it would violate habeas corpus. With no current active role in the company (if true) their case won't go past the preliminary hearing.
The worst aspect of the global warming "policy" discussion is that we have a lot of crackpots involved. There are numerous people in this world that will tell you global warming is going to kill everyone or destroy the earth. I see it actually in local interviews with children, you see it in reply's to this article and you see it in the zealotry of the people involved.
Lets be clear about something, global warming, global climate change, whatever you want to call it isn't going to kill everyone, in fact even in the worst predictions it's not going to kill anyone directly. Sure we may have some violent storms that could potentially kill people, but weather does that anyway. Sure it might move food production zones around, it might cause some extinctions and it might trigger some wars (and even the loss of entire nations and peoples), or it could even cause massive population relocations, but it's not going to kill humanity as a whole. The planet being 6^ warmer isn't going to wipe out humanity, in fact how little we know about what it could do is the most worrying part of these predictions. For all we really know global warming could in fact make the planet MORE habitable to humans, not only improving food production but creating better climates or even eliminating deserts. The reality is we don't know what will happen, scientists like normal are reacting out of fear and saying don't change the mold until we know precisely what will happen. But lets deal with the other side, if we react too quickly we could destroy our only means of trying to stop the human initiated change, namely severe harm to economies world wide.
Second, global warming isn't going to kill all life on earth or destroy the ecosystem. What it's going to do is cause specific pressure on species that may then evolve or go extinct. The earth has had a much warmer climate, than even the worst predictions make, in the past and life on this planet will go happily along it's merry way. Really humanity doesn't have the ability to destroy life on earth, unless by some miracle we could toss the earth into the sun or split the planet in half. And short of burning the planet in the sun I doubt it would extinguish all life anyway. Anyone that says all life on earth will ever end (short of the sun going red giant and burning the planet up) doesn't have the foggiest idea how resilient life really is. Lets not forget this planet has undergone at least 5 major extinctions that wiped out in one incident 85% of all life.
I'm more worried that we could be trying to restrain natural climate change. This planet has cycles, is humanity going to try to stop the next ice age? Heck maybe we just did. But I have a feeling that if we were looking at disadvantageous natural climate change we would try to stop it. There is one thing I'm very sure of, we simply don't have enough understanding of climatology, the effects of more energy in the system or even how we can fix it not to mention how to actually control climate. We are having policy discussions about something that although we understand what is probably happening, we don't know what the consequences are nor can we say with 100% certainty that we are even correct. Climate is simply too large of a problem with too many variables to really address with our science in it's infancy.
IMO there is a much more serious problem facing this planet that has been around 60 years or more, namely overpopulation. This is the one that could cause the most global destruction, as at some point it's going to involve war. They will be large wars with the most destructive armaments in history, and we just might try that final solution again, either deliberately or accidentally.
There are a number of teenage girls on sex offender lists for taking pictures of themselves!
The problem is that the entire middle east is revving up for a Sunni on Shiite fight. The press in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen, Egypt and many other Sunni states are talking extensively about the "Shiite" problem. (there are distinct similarities with Hitlers "Jewish" problem) Saudi Arabia has said publicly that if the Iraqi's don't provide more governmental control to the Sunni's they are going to start providing money and weapons to the Sunni insurgency. This stupid occupation is about to involve the entire middle east in war, a war that the American's will be caught in the middle of. This is exactly the reason Bush Sr. never took Saddam out with only 50 miles to Baghdad and an Army of 500 million on the ground.
We can't solve a border problem that has existed since the stupid British (and the league of nations) drew their arbitrary lines and created nations that were divided among three ethnic groups that have traditionally never gotten along. Iraq shouldn't exist, Syria should extend to Baghdad, Kurdistan should encompass part of Turkey and Iran (or be all part of Turkey), and Iran should have the southern half of Iraq up to Najaf.
When the civil war starts enmass, America needs to be out of there. And the stupidest thing about this is that we should have known this before we ever got involved. But Bush 2.0 was adamant about trying to kill the guy that tried to kill his daddy that the American's are up shit creek as a result.
There is a critical sentence in the article that I don't think many people are grasping. The suit doesn't provide protection to major joints. I thought the suit was pretty cool till I realized he couldn't solve the problem of covering joints and still having flexibility. This means (just like the old suits of armor) that the suit has a vulnerability at every major joint (knees, hips, elbows and shoulders). If you look at the suit you will notice he only has black fabric over his hip bones and midsection and probably the same fabric on the front of the elbows, back of the knees and under the arms. This means the suit has as many vulnerabilities as it does protections, and it no doubt causes a reduction in mobility. Even if he did make it look like the chief in Halo.
It's a cool idea but more than worthless as a full suit in battle. This isn't to say that better vests and armor couldn't be developed using his ideas if his claims are real.
You are comparing products where there is difficulty in switching. There is NOTHING stopping anyone from using Yahoo search, Microsoft Search or any of the other 100 search engines. In fact although Google is the number one search engine, they certainly don't control anywhere near what could be considered a monopoly market share. Yahoo and MSN search are both very popular, you shouldn't equate your own anecdotal experience with everyone else's usage pattern. In fact the only way you could prove they were a monopoly would be to show that they control advertising on the internet (ever heard of doubleclick), with barriers to entry to the market that would preclude competition. Anyone with a server can setup a search engine, or advertising company. As a result you would have extreme difficulty in proving that Google violated the Sherman Anti-Trust act. Also, your statement indicate that you don't know what defines a trust (or monopoly) or how courts define them. It's not illegal to have a Monopoly in the US, it's illegal to leverage that monopoly into other businesses.
Bentley Microstation fully supports, opens, and can even work directly in DWG. Maybe you should evaluate it.
It's not difficult for the Fed's to pass a law banning such restrictions. They did it with small satellite dish's after all.
Frankly, anyone who thinks for a minute the limited arms freedom we have in the country would allow the citizens to mount anything but a rouge campaign of terrorism if the military stood with the government in an attempt to establish a totalitarian state has smoked too much crack in their life. Your pistol, shotgun and Semi-auto AK-47 or AR-15 along with your neighbors in a disorganized insurgency means exactly nothing against a well trained fighting force. The Iraqi insurgency is far better armed than you (and is receiving state support) and is lucky to kill a US soldier a day while 1000's of insurgents perish every month. The right to bear arms doesn't safeguard our constitution one single iota. What safeguards our constitution is that our military supports and swears obligation to that constitution not elected leaders.
By your definition any limits on the ownership of weapons should be illegal. In fact you are advocating that there should be the ability of any citizen to purchase anti-air missiles, RPG's, Anti-tank rockets, claymore mines, anti-tank mines, C-4 and other military grade explosives, tanks, fighter jets, naval frigates. By your definition the only limit to ownership should be what the individual purchaser can afford.
If that isn't what you are advocating then you are making up your own interpretation and/or definitions. Either government has the power to limit the rights of ownership of "arms" (which includes all of the above) or they don't. There isn't some middle ground where you can say citizens can own X, but not Y because Y didn't exist at the time of the founders. You don't get to make up your own limiting definition of "arms" that only fits the items you think shouldn't be limited.
Lets face a reality, without the word regulated and Militia in the sentence there would be no limit to what people could own. But a group of Justices in the 1930's ruling on such regulation of, and control of the "Militia" (as a recognized concept from the founders time) ruled that in consideration of the words of the founders in not only the constitution, but their DEBATES (at the constitutional congress) on the amendments, and their personal writings showed that the second amendment wasn't meant to give free reign to any citizen (as editorialized in other laws of the time that restricted ownership based on sex and skin color) to own any weapon they wanted. What the court ruled is that at the time the founders didn't want the FEDERAL government to limit ownership of firearms to prevent the STATES from being able to raise a well armed and regulated militia (any study of the period of time would reveal that the militia was an obligation of white men of age at the time, and in fact many states required the ownership and maintenance of a long rifle by every white male in that class as part of that regulation of the militia). Because if the federal government had the ability to take away the individual states abilities to raise an armed force than there could be domination of the nation by a small group of northern states at the time or even a foreign invasion (as their was no national army outside wartime). For example, had the 2nd amendment not existed the Northern states would have used the federal authority they could muster, with their larger civilian populations and as a result voting power, to disarm the south and stop slavery before the Civil war ever started.
So either you believe in limits or you don't. You don't have to believe in no limits or making up your own definition of what "arms" are to support individual responsible ownership of firearms. And just because someone believes that limits are needed and supported by the framers doesn't mean that they want to take all your guns away. There is a middle ground on this issue and the only retards in the debate are ones that polarize the debate into two camps of either for or against.
Personally after having studied the framers intent and the courts previous ruling on the issue, and subsequent 60+ years of denial to hear further c
Polonium 210 is difficult to obtain from it's natural sources. In fact it's so difficult to purify that you need a full blown nuclear laboratory to separate the element. There are only a dozen labs in this world capable of extracting it. All of these labs are state controlled. So if it's very difficult to purify, can only be obtained from a limited number of state run laboratories, do you honestly believe that anyone other than a head of state could have ordered the poisoning? What about the Ukraine and the orange revolution? Yushchenko was poised by Russia, of that there is no doubt, it just didn't kill him. It obvious to me that they decided giving someone a cup of dioxin wouldn't kill them so they moved onto something that they knew would and would actually prevent an autopsy for fear of contaminating the doctors doing it.
BP (formerly British Petorleum) is one of the largest if not the largest producer of solar panels. Nearly ever other producer, if not all, are owned by subsidiaries of oil companies. Big oil has major investments in every other alternative energy prospect that is actually a viable energy source. By that I mean they move to invest in products or sources that will provide profit to the companies and are economically viable. I suggest that you actually analyze the financial statements of the Big oil companies you think are so evil and realize just how much money they throw into alternatives on the understanding that oil will NOT last forever.
You want to know what big oil will do if everything is run on fusion? Who do you think will be building those fusion plants? Who do you think will be suppling the fusible materials? I'm willing to bet you will be buying that Mr. Fusion you think will power your car (cold fusion doesn't exist) would be an Exxon Mr. Fusion. The fusible materials, that would be produced by BP or one of the other multinationals. Given that most, if not all, the solar panels are built by them that they will move to supply the energy regardless of the source, just like they continue to parrot in every single quarterly financial statement.
On and BTW, nothing is ever free. If you think energy will be "free" if humanity can make fusion successful you're a fool. As long as labor and resources have to be consumed there will always be a cost. The only free energy is sunlight, if you can find a way to plug your TV directly into the sun with no labor or materials involved then it will be free. Otherwise it's going to cost something, unless you're a communist and you think you can enslave the labor and consume materials from others without expense.
There is one simple fact, regardless of the person, their stated views, and even their voting history. If it comes down to something that the party decides is important 95% of the elected officials are going to vote along party lines. Given the current line of the republican party is tax-cut and spend, right to life regardless of how the majority of america feels about it, and the belief that we can actually win a war on terror.
In my opnion the republican party no longer represents what they did 20 years ago. It has been corrupted and swung so far to the right that the parties positions represent the views of less than 20%. For those reasons I don't feel it's wrong to vote against republicans strictly based on party, what's wrong is voting for any party just because of the party. In fact I saw my states senators and represntatives who are anti-goverment interference in family decisions (something that is an incredibly powerfull position that is probably supported by over 90% of the population in Utah) vote to interfere in the Shivo case because the party wanted them to, not because anyone in Utah thought it was right for the federal government to intervene in a private family decision, and in fact was widely condemed in the state by the LDS Church and many others.
I agree with you that you should select canidates based on their views, but there is one essential criteria as well, when the chips are down are they going to vote the party line and do you agree with that party line? Because if they vote party line and the party line is about tax-cut and spend, or government interference in your own home and medical decisions I don't want anything to do with them regardless of how they vote the rest of the time. It's those key votes that hurt america the most.
They did, to nVidia, about 3 years ago.
It's not difficult to see that this is aimed at two markets. The first is gamers, where you can move different aspects of the games (such as the physics, AI, graphics card support and advanced functions) to seperate cores and improve the game experience geometrically.
The second market is the server market. With virtulization built into the CPU, and multiple cores it becomes trivial for servers to run multiple OS's for different tasks and with the PCIe slots a disk subsystem that would theoretically support independent raid storage for each core and virtual OS (it would be in theory possible to have 4 independent raid subsystems based on the PCIe slots). This helps reduce the number of servers, the amount of power consumed and could significantly lower the costs of datacenters.
BP, formarly british petroluem is one of the largest if not the largest suppliers of Solar Panels on the planet. Most of the oil companies have their little branch of alternative energy that they explore.
Hunger does not exist for lack of food. Hunger exists for two reasons and two reasons alone, war and political instability. You don't solve hunger by providing more and more food, you stop hunger by stopping war, and political instability through force of arms or other permanet means. But I'm sure you don't like that idea, I'm sure you think that you solve hunger by provding more food to hungry people and being touchy feely sensitive with the armed bandits so that the people causing the problem can steal all the food and sell it back to some of the people you are trying to save.
It's a wonderful idea to get rid of nuclear weapons but even if everyone got rid of them someone would attempt to develop them or use another poor mans WMD, as long as the world remains as it is. Until the entire world is comprised of consumer oriented democratic countries, with a strong middle class, that respect and protect all individuals/minorities and their rights, that dream isn't possible. You can not give up the nukes until all countries are as stable and at least close to as wealthy as the West. Unfortuneatly we won't reach that point anytime soon, and given the complete lack of job creation in the arabic world (and the apparent lack of desire to create jobs of any kind) once the oil money supporting the region evaporates (probably by 2020) the goal will be unattainable.
And contrary to what the rest of the world, and in particular the whiners on slashdot, wants to believe, the US is doing more to empower and enrich the rest of the world than any other nation. The US has been exporting tens to hundereds of billions of dollars in wealth yearly to China (and trillions to the examples to follow) in an orchastated plan to raise the standard of living and prosperity of China (why do you think Clinton stopped the Repub's from taking away most favored trade status and why do you think the US gave china that status, in 1980, 20 years before europe even considered it). Just as America did with SK, Japan, Singapore, HK, Taiwan etc..) in the 40-80's. In anywhere from 5-10 years China's economy will reach the point of no longer needing mass exports to sustain their economy and 1/6 of the worlds population will be on their way to being free of poverty for good(as the trillions of dollars exported from the US will finally create a self-sustained economy) and we will move on to the next best canidate. No other nation on the planet has acted so decisively and unilaterly to this goal, even at the expense of US jobs. Giving a nation aid does little to solve the problem, giving them jobs will solve their poverty in short time.
Yea the Bush administration sucks, but the american people don't. Even now congress is going to be democratic next year and if the young people get out and vote the majority could be strong enough to shut Bush's policies down completely and bring back the honor of this wonderful country. America isn't the world's enemy, but you are probably keen to believe the words of the leadership of NK, Iran, Venezula, Syria, Sudan, etc, as you have apparently fallen for the coordinated propaganda compaign those nations are engaged in, and their top notch reputation on respect for the truth can do nothing but help that opinion I'm sure. You also probably also think Iran isn't building nuclear weapons (just like you believe like their leader does that the holocaust was greatly exagerated) and as the country that stopped contruction on the Nuke plant the US was building for them 30 years ago suddenly had a change of heart and believe that nuclear power is their salvation so they restarted const
What dope you been smoking? Half the states in the union are at will employment. That means you can be fired for ANY reason and you don't have to be told WHY you are being fired.
I'm guessing the most optimistic person in the world wrote that. First they aren't generating much power, the waste steam is a huge maintenance hassle as steam pipes either need to be made of stainless steel or something else that isn't going to rust. Second, after building it they are going to discover that they need to spend millions every year on scrubbers just to keep themselves below the EPA limits on the pollution, heavy metals and other nasty stuff from getting into the air. After doing that they will find out that their garbage fees go up astronomically as a result of the number of shutdowns due to violating said EPA standards because half the residents are throwing away toxic materials in the trash (you can ask people not to throw mercury, batteries and toxic chemicals away but they will still do it) and as a result of the damage said materials do to the scrubbers, incinerator and geration systems. And finally they will be paying to dispose of the hazerdous sludge that contains the remainder of the heavy metals and other toxic chemicals (take two household chemicals toss in a plasma arc and what will you get? millions of cominations of nasty nasty substances that can't be predicted or accounted for) that weren't belched out of the smoke stack. And if they think for a minute any roadway designer or contractor is going to use that stuff without being mandated by law they need to lay off the crack.
The fact is that you don't build roads with materials that have unknown and extremely variable properties. 50 years ago they might have used the sludge in road construction (because they didn't know better) but not now, the chemical properties could be destructive/corrosive to the roadway, cause hazardous contamination in runoff and dust, and it could range from hard durable rock like material to a bad bit of clay. We don't build roads out of trash, unless someone is paying for you to take that trash, and it's a guaranteed uniform and chemically neutral substance, like glass. But this is what happens when you let the marketing department write your article.
Our county made the mistake of building an incinerator 20 years ago, it was the worst mistake they ever made and became the biggest money suction device that has kept the county broke for the length of the factility. I bet the total cost over 20 years not including interest was double the estimated price and it would have been cheaper to ship the garbage to China at the prices being paid per ton to incinerate the garbage.
I get a kick when people post that the government can't prosecute people for gambling with the wire act. When in fact the wire act has been used to take down bookies for close to 40 years and was passed primarily to stop organized crime conducting activities like book making via telephone. The fact is that gambling is illegal in many places and using a telephone or computer to gamble is equally illegal in a LOT of places. Facilitation of gambling via the internet is going to be just as illegal and a company that is almost exclusively targeting US citizens for gambling and then the CEO flying to the US trying to influence US politics as a foreigner (which is also illegal in certain jurisidictions) isn't worried that he's going to be arrested for violating US laws?
I'd also like to point out that all you foreigners that are SHOCKED that the US is enforcing US laws wouldn't be shocked if someone selling NAZI material on the internet would be arrested in Germany (which has happened), or a US citizen selling and shipping handguns to Europe would also be arrested. Do you honestly think the guy running the pedophillia website targeting specifically French citizens isn't going to be arrested when he travels there? You're a fool and an idiot if you don't think people conducting illegal transactions in foreign countries get arrested all the time when they travel to said country. I bet I could find an example of someone that was arrested on travel to a foreign country for every nation on earth and for every action imaginable. There is nothing special about what the US doing so nor is there going to be any nation on earth that hasn't done something very similar, in fact the only thing special about it is that it's fasionable right now to attack the US.
Almost no engineer in transportation work has ANY involvment in the construction or inspection of the work performed. That is often handled by a seperate entity with usually only the major design changes being assisted in plan preperation by the original consultant. There are expections where the same firm will handle design and inspection/field changes (almost always small jobs) but on a project the size of Boston central artery project there is a zero chance the same designers were even anywhere near the construction/inspection phase of the work.
A design doesn't end when it's signed off on. There is a construction phase. If the proper methods aren't used it's the fault of the constructor and the inspection staff. If some blogger who claims to be an inspector and rattles off a few training courses as evidence that he/she knows that nothing in the field happens as the design suggests then it's HIM/HER that isn't doing their job. The engineer relies on the inspection staff to ensure that plans and specifications are followed.
After much political hay making by Romney the conclusion (which will be reached long after Romney has moved it out of the press spotlight) is going to be that there was graft and problems in the construction and inspection and that the design was good. On east coast jobs it's almost a guarantee, especially the NE.
Eisenhower wasn't impressed with his ability to move through germany on the autobahn, he was impressed with the German's ability to efficiently move troops around in defense of their nation. This is a critical difference.
The straigtness was a requirement of the National Defense Highway System (as Eisenhower called it). Most people probably don't realize it but the highway system was constructed for defense of our nation to make the moving of troops and materials quick in the event someone tries to invade the US (a real possibility in the 50s).
The system had an early requirement that every 5th mile had to be straight so that it could be used as emergency runways. That requirement no longer exists for the most part, but I believe there are still stretches that the alignment can't be modified because they are crucial to defense.
I-70 Directly North of Moab is asphalt and has been for more than 12 years.
Utah's Diebold machines print a readable paper trail that enters the traditional locked paper ballot box. So there is a very good way to verify results at least in Utah. This was one of the election commision's requirements when they selected the machines, a verifiable paper trail for every vote.
Really, what were the damages? What was the monetary value of the "damage" done? Did someone lose their job? Have their identity stolen? Without real damages you don't have a suit, IMO. (Real damages don't qualify as your friends laughing at you for borrowing so much money for an art history degree.) I have a hard time imagining any real damages that would be likely or did occur from this (unless someones identity was stolen then you could sue to recover expenses and damage to your credit). Although this country is lawsuit happy thinking you can sue someone for sneering at you, I just don't think you should have a case, in a situation like this, unless you have real and _measureable_ damages.