It really depends on the car. Sure, the cheap ones have a lot of Asian parts.
My car is a good ol' American car (kinda). 2000 Pontiac Firebird TransAm WS/6, a product of General Motors. It was assembled in Canada.:)
The engine is an LS1. The engine block is cast in Ontario, Canada.
I'm pretty sure the body sheet metal and plastics were made in Canada, but I couldn't find a reference for that.
When I changed my water pump and power steering pump, they both had "Made In Canada" stickers on them.
The radio is a Delco/Delphi Monsoon. Delphi has (or had) 29 plants in the US, and others worldwide.
There are various Bosch products in the car too. Those were likely manufactured in the United States, but I believe they have worldwide operations also.
I used to be the senior tech guy for a high bandwidth company, so I have a little insight into this.
Someone else wrote a little bit about the differences in bandwidth cost associated with larger lines, which I can confirm.
As a little customer (residential or small business) you pay a lot more for bandwidth.
As a "little" customer just using 45Mb/s (T3) we paid a particular rate. Sorry, it's been a long time, and I don't remember how much. When we went up to 100Mb/s lines in datacenters, our price dropped to somewhere in the ballpark of $100/Mb/s. When we went up to GigE circuits, our port charges went up, but our bandwidth prices dropped. If I remember correctly, they were down to $15/Mb/s. That was with several GigE circuits, all using lots of bandwidth.
I don't have specifics on Google's network, but once you reach a particular size, you get to start playing in the realm of a provider, which means you can make your own peering arrangements, leasing dark fiber, etc, etc, etc.
Both sides always pay for the bandwidth. Effectively, everything is paid for twice.
I, as a Google user, am paying for bandwidth to be able to access Google. I, as a webhost, am paying when Google spiders my hosted sites. Google, as a webhost, is paying for people to access their site. Google, as a "client", is paying when their software spiders.
Now, is it fair to pick Google out of the thousands of spiders that are crawling daily, and say that they owe based on that? Not really. Their spiders do crawl. They aren't terribly aggressively compared to many. Some download everything over and over. In the past, I've had to block some crawlers. Some are stupid, and will saturate a 100Mb/s line. I've never had one saturate a GigE line, but in time I'm sure it'll happen.
The company I worked for that had multiple GigE lines suffered more from people doing "wget -r example.com". It wasn't just the occasional user, it was many users, frequently. There were hundreds of gigs of data that they could recursively spider on some sites. Effected webmasters and webhosts should put in countermeasures to protect against this. Our primary one identified that a user was pulling more than normal. My "more than normal" was 10x what should be pulled by a customer on a good high speed connection. It would throttle just their traffic. Should they continue, it would start throwing "403" pages to them. Should that not help, their traffic would be blackholed.
Oddly enough, with millions of daily users, those countermeasures never drew complaints. The same millions of daily users would complain about anything. We'd receive emails that someone on a dialup in the arctic circle (just a random place far away from good connectivity) would complain if the page didn't render within 10 seconds.
The original document was funded by a couple ISP's. They want more money. They always do. They simply can't charge the outside connection, but they will reflect it back to their own customers.
If they charge Google, that opens up a whole can of unmanageable worms. So Google gets a bill from every ISP in the world for transit costs. Now they have to bill every company online with services that pull. One of my sites now pulls RSS feeds from hundreds of other sites, and aggregate them online on our site. Should my company be responsible for any more than my bandwidth bills? No. It's up to the other provider to make a decision based on their business on what to do. Do they stop allowing me to pull the RSS feed? Probably not. It in turn brings traffic to their site, and they make more advertising money. Some just shut down their feed over time. Those usually seem to be for other reasons. I've never been asked to stop pulling any RSS feed, and we've been doing this for years.
I've never worked on a project like this, but on other things I've done, I've used it as a learning experience. We always learn how to do things better over time, even if they're not the same type of project.
Depending on the project, I've either kept a copy of my code somewhere safe, or I've just remembered "oh, it took this to do it well", and then do it again but better next time.
I've known people who recycle their code directly. Unfortunately, that makes their errors follow them, and they reuse bloated libraries over (and over and over). On some, I've had to clean up, where I've found multiple things that do the same or almost the same things, and many things that were simply unused and had no application in the new project. Why should you have 10,000 lines of code, where only a couple hundred do the job. Sometimes the leftovers contained subtle but exploitable bugs. Is it worth saving a little time to leave a potentially dangerous bug in place?
Do do know what happened to the last guy who tried to make his own ZPM?
It's classified still, but suffice it to say, he has a lovely home at 37.096175, -116.093645. It's not really visible, being that from the lobby, the elevator only goes down. I suggest you don't try to visit. Some of the neighbors are a bit grumpy, and don't like visitors.
I've recently been here. It wasn't what you would normally expect either.
My step son died on February 10, 2008. He was 13. You can read about what happened here. It was natural, but totally unexpected. One minute, he's fine. The next, he's dead. It wasn't something with blame.
The school was great about notifying the student body, and all of his immediate friends were already told by us. I wanted to let his online friends know what happened. He played a few games online (ok, several), and had friends there. This was the hard part. His accounts were "hacked", because he had used simple passwords. I wanted to teach him everything I could, and part of that is network security. Use good passwords. Combinations of letters, numbers, and characters that make nonsensical words, but have meaning to him. He listened.
Some of the games, I was able to get in through cookies they had left behind that stored his passwords in plain text. Bad security, but helpful. Some at least gave me the userid's. I made a list of the sites he visited that were games, and all the usernames and passwords I could find. I got into most of them, but the one that he played the most I never managed to get into. I wrote to the administrator of the site, told them the situation, and asked for them for help notifying his online friends. I never received a response. They probably thought I was actually up to something bad.
For myself, I have a trusted friend who knows my passwords, and even the PIN's for my ATM cards. If the worst should happen, they can notify everyone I know via email (log in, send to all, big deal). That friend even has the passwords for my servers, so they can update my web sites to let people know what happened to me. My cell phone logs have everyone I talk to in the real world.
Myself, I don't expect a lot after I die. 3 people will show up to the funeral, if it doesn't impose on their schedule. My previously mentioned friend will pull my $200 life savings out of the bank, and share it with my friends. I've already asked my friends to drink heavily and be happy at my funeral. That is unless I'm in an alcohol involved car accident or something. Then it's just tasteless, unless they really want to.:)
Sadly enough, I've already given away the rest of my life, so I have nothing else worth having. Someone will want my car, but that's the last of my prized possessions.
It would have really helped if the story included what the project was. Ya, it would have been blatant advertising, but at least we'd know what we're talking about.
They probably could use a good person or company to evaluate their business model, and adjust it accordingly. There is probably a good way to turn a very nice profit, while offering the free product. Since we don't know what it is, all I can do is guess and compare to things I know.
A friend of mine does web development. One of her larger income streams involves an open source product. The product itself is free. It does a lot of stuff. You can do all the normal open source stuff. They charge for installation and customization. They are busy enough that they farm out customization requests to developers who have proven that they know the code well and can make good customizations efficiently. She spends at least 20 hours a week (at $80/hr) customizing for various customers. She also maintains her own set of add-on modules that she sells and installs. Even though her add-on modules are already written, she charges a set fee for them.
Really, it all depends on the value involved. Her work usually involves the ecommerce side of the application. Even if they spend $1000 for a customization, it can likely bring in hundreds of thousands to her customer. Customers who are happy, who make more money because of the customizations, keep coming back for newer and better customizations. On occasion, I field phone calls for her. Either it's because I'm there and she's busy, or they're asking really hard questions that require outside expert input (I'm the outside expert).
Some customers simply don't know how to work a web page. They'll pay for her to install the software (a simple matter) and configure it (also a simple matter). It's easy to do, but there are plenty of online business owners who have a hard time checking their own email. Sometimes they are so technically confused, they can't make online payments and have to send physical checks because they can't do a bill pay from their bank or do an online credit card payment. It's worth it to them to have it done for $80/hr, rather than mess with it for a few days on their own.
The company still makes good money. They're only farming out the work because they don't want or need to have their own staff doing it. Maybe it's worth it to provide excellent support from experts by giving the work away, than to have to pay a staffer $100k/yr who can do it. Maybe they don't want the headache of keeping customizers in house. Code still gets handed up to the main product for inclusion. Not everything does, because it keeps it profitable for the company to charge for the add on, for their free product. I don't do business models, I do the work. I know some really great business people who figure out where the better profit is, even if they're giving away most of it.
I love these people too. I get $100/hr for my work. Sometimes it's as easy as picking out a new network switch and plugging it in for them. Two hours of drive time (to and from their site) an hour installing, and an hour talking to them about what else they want can get me $400 with no markup on the hardware. Sometimes I sell them Cisco gear that I stock at home because that's one of the things I do. I may have spent $100 on the hardware, but I'll sell it to them at $1000, because it's still much less than current market value.
A couple close shots, but you're far from sinking my battleship. Actually, I probably wouldn't hear if you dropped a cruise missile anywhere you thought I am. But you did a good job of identifying my old camera. Congratulations.:) The question though would be, am I shooting the picture and that's my friend, or is my friend shooting a picture and that's me?
It's still a long long long way from including me as a defendant or a witness in a lawsuit, as is the original topic was.
I have a female friend who programs. She runs into the problem of people know she's a girl, so she obviously can't program. I've worked with her, and know she can. Sometimes I run into problems that she can solve. Sometimes she runs into problems that I can solve. That's teamwork though, not a failure of either of us to be able to do our work.
Sometimes I've gone talked to her clients, and said exactly what she said, and they believe it when I say it, because I'm a guy and must know what I'm saying. It's not good, but I don't mind backing her up when she needs it. Really, she shouldn't need it though. Now we just have to convince the rest of the world of that.
I use "JW Smythe" as my online name. It's all over the place. Luckly, there are a few other people who use that or variations of it "J.W. Smythe", "John W. Smythe", "Jon Smythe". Pick out the real me. Of course, it's not my real name, but it sounds reasonable. If someone I'm not expecting calls me by my alias, I ignore them, or ask them who they're talking about.
My real name oddly enough is even more popular, by Google searches. There are lots of "me" all around the world, all doing different things. It keeps people wondering if my real name is yet another pseudonym, or it's really me.:)
Only clients and friends know my real name. They also have read my little essay on why I use an alias. Some people still ask for clarification of why. Why? Because there are a lot of weird people out there, and I don't want to go around to the millions of freaks out there saying "Hi, my name is ____ , come look for me." I've known call center folks who have been harassed, threatened, and stalked, because they've used their real names. Even when I've answered phones, they get my pseudonym of the day (or of the job). I use names like some guys use girlfriends. Use it until it's burnt, then pretend it never existed.
The reason of liability when some corporate lawyer decides to play rough applies too, but that's pretty low on my priority list. I worry more about the millions of lunatics floating around the Internet.:)
I would normally say "it's an Acer", but if you do a little research, you'll find something interesting about WalMart products. Virtually every product in WalMart, is made specifically for WalMart. They are made slightly cheaper so WalMart can lower the final cost and always undercut their competition.
I found this out with Sony HandCams. One place I worked had about a dozen of them for live web broadcasting (make assumptions, you're probably right). Two broke, so we went to a Sony authorized repair shop. He looked at them, or more specifically at the model, and heard our complaint. He then told us "I can't fix that". He wasn't trying to be difficult, so he explained that this model was a WalMart model. The broken component was something that breaks very quickly. He can't get replacements for it. If it had been another model from another retail outlet, he would have been more than happy to fix it, but it probably wouldn't have broken anyways.
We had saved $50/ea on them. If I recall correctly even though they were simply sitting on tripods, attached by RCA cable to digitizers, 90% of them had some sort of failure within a year. I took one of the few surviving ones, just because we retired all of them. I left it charging on my desk, and one day it just started opening the tape door on it's own. I could close it, and sometime in the next few days it would just open it like someone hit the eject button.
If you want something that will survive, don't buy it at WalMart, even if it looks just like the item being sold somewhere else, and only has a very subtle variation on the model number. WalMart makes their money selling crap at a price lower than the other stores can sell their slightly better crap. They know when it breaks, you will probably go back to WalMart and buy another one, blaming the manufacturer, not WalMart business practices.
Years ago, we wanted to build a couple nice database machines. Quad Opteron 848, when they had just been released, running a 64 bit Linux distro. I researched parts, put together my list, and presented it to the bosses. One of the bosses had a hardon for Dell, so we took my proposed configuration and sent it over to a Dell rep. They came back with a 32 bit machine for something like 400% of my price. I then sent him over my list with prices on it and told him that he had to come back with something comparable both hardware and price wise. He came back with something that had 50% of the memory, 25% of the storage, and half the processors (32 bit) for the same price.
Because we wanted bleeding edge fast, we were out of luck. They couldn't do it for us without bleeding us dry.
Another time, someone I know wanted a new server. He looked for what Dell was clearing out, and found something not quite so new. It was nice, just not as nice as he could have bought. He saved 25% by buying what Dell was clearing out of their warehouse. But, in doing that, he also bought 2 laptops and 8 workstations at regular price as part of a "package" deal that was suppose to be to his advantage. If I had done everything (except the laptops) I could have saved him a lot of money. The major issue became, he needed it "now", and I would take about a week or two to get the parts in, assembled, and tested.
For him, he thought it was great, except we were shipping stuff back and forth trying to get the order right for two weeks. He was excited to have their parts warranty. He had a drive fail about 6 months later. It happened Friday afternoon, and we started working with their support. They kept us going until 6pm at which point they said "we can have a replacement to you Monday before 10am". He bought the warranty with the understanding it was a 4 hour turnaround. He was told that was only Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm. Since it was 6pm, it wouldn't be handled until Monday morning. {sigh}
For the most part, I use commodity parts, especially in wearing parts like drives. I could have gone to the store and picked up a new drive and had it fixed by Friday evening. I don't know a local vendor for SCSI drives, and he didn't want to spend money on something that was suppose to be fixed under warranty that he spent extra money on.
I work on Dells, only because companies I've worked with use them. I'm not fond of them. I'm actually usually annoyed. But hey, they're paying the bill, they can buy the replacement parts from Dell.
I agree totally. That's what I was trying to say, mostly. There are frequently circumstances that make things not quite so easy. What if they lost their DB and didn't have backups. Oops. Putting a nice note up is nice, but doesn't resolve the fact that some people depended on the information. But, if a resource is so important to them, why didn't they make a copy also?
In my case, it's a non-profit project, so I consider it similar. I'm not paid to keep backups. If my machine should go down, it's up to me if I can put it back up or not. I guess the biggest part of doing a project is your love for it. I've been screamed at by significant others because I bought new hardware, when I should have spent it on something else. Once upon a time, I ran Slashcode. It is (or was) much heavier than some other options. I had to run it on 3 servers when my load got high enough. I went to the store and picked up two machines to keep it alive on. Why? Because I love my project. Since then, it's moved to other software, and then finally to my own code. Slashcode was good but heavy. PHPNuke was good and light, but exploitable. My code? Better, lighter, and has very good input validation. So far it hasn't been abused or exploited. (no, this isn't an invitation to anyone please)
Honestly, the day I decide not to do it any more, before I shut it down, I'll offer it to someone. Probably anyone. I'd accept an offer from someone who would be trustworthy with confidential data (the email addresses of users), and I could trust would keep the spirit of the site alive. If they do or don't, that's really up to them as soon as I give up control. My users gave a level of trust by providing their email addresses to me, even though I know many are one-use email addresses. Before I'd ever relinquish control, I would notify the users of the pending change, and provide a method to purge their information entirely.
I was looking for information on a news story we were researching 4 years ago. I searched for the contact's email address, and found it listed on another site in a similar situation. The contact had signed up to that site. When they gave up the site, they put their full user list on the front of their site. They aren't maintaining the site, and the user information is in clear view for anyone to use. Not nice. Confidential when I take information means confidential, not "until I decide to hand it out to the world."
Several years ago, I was living in Los Angeles. My day job was IT work, and my hobby was (and still is) running a new site. I very frequently (3-4 days per week) worked in downtown LA, and would drive home between 7pm to 3am.
One night, I came out of downtown onto the 110 North, and moved over to the inside lanes fairly quickly, so I could be prepared to take I-5 North. I came up behind a car with a website name on the back. I didn't really think anything about it, until I saw the driver hold a video camera backwards and was filming me. Ok, weird people. I noted the name, and went to the web site, electronicharassment.com. Check archive.org on or about July 2004, the site is now just a links page.
Here's a snippet from the site.
--- Since I started my research on this topic, when the harassment commenced the number of websites on this topic has doubled, and the level and the intensity of the harassment have quadrupled. I'm now followed everywhere, even out of town. Once they followed me to the airport and I wondering when I go visit family will they follow me there as well? They laser and microwave me in class, at the theater, driving, even at the funeral of a friend, they stung me during services. There is no respect, and they endanger the lives of others, especially when chasing me on the freeways. I lived in 5 different places and that's not including hotels. Within days they are set up in an apartment or homes adjacent to where I was residing and the harassment resumes. When I go out of town I'm followed by a convoy of vehicles, SUV, sports cars, and lastly the old and new white vans, although they are occasionally a different color. ---
There was more information on the site and linked from there about how to document the harassment, which included photos and videos of the harassment. Recording all the people following you. It really read of some insanity, but if you were really the target of some weird military psyop, wouldn't you seem insane?
In following the links on the site, it became obvious that this was paranoia being reinforced by other nutjobs on web sites (excuse my professional headshrinker terminology).
Since I run a news site, I thought it could make an interesting story if there was really a story there. I didn't want a story about another nutjob in California. There's a million nuts, and twice as many stories. Maybe there was some wild conspiracy. Hey, it could happen. I sent off the following email looking for further information. It was never answered. I guess crazy people don't need help from the press, even if it could stop the mystery agency from harassing them.
--- begin email From: "Editor - Free Internet Press" To: [censored] Subject: surveillance Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 00:30:52 -0700 (PDT)
Good evening,
I was behind what I believe was your car on the 110 in downtown LA this evening. The red [censored]. I noticed you were filming my car. I thought this was a bit odd, and I noted the site name on the bumper (http://electronicharassment.com/), so I could see if it explained why you were filming. Apparently it does.
If it makes you feel better, the [censored] that was behind you wasn't following you. I was leaving a work site, going to where I'm currently staying. I may have pulled in quickly behind you, but I assure you, it wasn't to follow you, it was because I needed to get over to that side, to catch the 5.
If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you some questions. I'm asking, with the possible intention of running a story on you on our site, http://freeinternetpress.com/.
We will run your story completely anonymously. It's not necessary for you to tell us your name, or an
Unfunded hobbiest resources have absolutely no "responsibility" to stay in operation.
It would be nice if they made an effort for someone else to take over the project, but in the end, it's their pet project to do with (or kill off) as needed.
It's the same as a commercial product, except when the company can't fund it any more, they can simply drop it and the users are really SOL. They don't necessarily open it up for the general users.
Of course, when something happens, people complain. One of the things I do is run a news site. We ask for, and appreciate donations, which remove the ads from the page. We get a few (a very few). If/when things happen, people complain. If they don't get their nightly newsletter, they complain. If they can't get to the site, they complain. If something happens to the server, they complain. The revenue from ads and donations don't cover the most basic of costs. They wouldn't even cover the power consumption of the server, much less bandwidth, hardware upgrades, SSL cert renewal, domain renewals, etc, etc.
The biggest reason that I keep running it is because it's parked on my personal web server. I have quite a few things tucked away on there, that I use frequently from wherever I may be sitting. If one day I decided to stop running the news, and put up a notice saying it's all gone, then that's the way it is. There is no "responsibility" to open source my code, redirect my domain to another source, or anything like that. Luckly, I run it because I like it. My thousands of readers like it. Maybe someday it will even support itself, but until then, if I decide to shut down the server tomorrow and never turn it back on, I have no obligation to do anything.
Bush had 8 years and lots of help to mangle lots of things..
It's easy to break something. It's a lot harder to fix it. Corruption is very hard to clean up. Your list is of some of the finest points of the f***ups done by the Bush administration. I'll hit some of your points though.
> Do you think he'll get the Dems to undo the Patriot Act?
I suspect this will be cleaned up and corrected to restore our rights as citizens.
> Do you think he'll get to the bottom of and stop the Wiretaps on US Citizens?
The "bottom of" was pretty clear. They were authorized from the top, and made their way down to listen on every person in the US. Stopping it should be easier with a new executive order superseding the last. Of course, he'll have to be careful and evaluate why, what, and what good they have done. There may be issues outside of what has made it to mainstream media that have been resolved.
> Do you think he'll have us 100% out of Iraq in the next week? Month? Year? Decade?
Obama has a 16 month plan. The standing Iraqi government demanded an 18 month pullout. Even still, I doubt it will be "100%" out. Consider previous conflicts. The US maintains bases in countries that it previously occupied. Vietnam may be the only exception to this. I can't think of any bases there offhand. We would likely be out of the daily combat against citizens of Iraq, but we'll likely maintain a presence in the area.
> Will he magically fix the economy? If so, how long? What exactly is he going to do?
Did the current administration magically destroy the economy in days? weeks? months? No. They overlooked an obvious problem, which allowed the rich who could invest in huge tracts of homes and sell them at an outragous profit. They overlooked offshoring American jobs to help large corporations increase their profit margins, as the US economy suffered. Nothing was done to mitigate this, such as increasing international trade tariffs, and limiting the low quality and proven dangerous products coming into our country. Lead tainted childrens toys and melamine tainted foods are two excellent examples of how the government has failed to protect it's people, at the advantage of large corporations.
> Will he walk on water?
He'll likely at least stay afloat, rather than sinking as his roll model George W Bush provided. As of March 2008, George W Bush took 879 vacation days at his ranch. With so many issues to attend to, any good leader (like, good, not even great or excellent) would be working to resolve things, not ignoring them. Will President Elect Obama actually work, rather than giving speeches full of blatent lies to pacify people into believing there's nothing wrong? I doubt it. He seems like the type of man who will actually be honest with the people. If he does, it would be like walking on water in contrast to Mr. Bush's "leadership" over the last 8 years.
I don't know how this ever made it to any news source. I'm trying to remember how long ago the first time I noticed it. It's been at least 10 years. My first phone that did it was an old Nextel.
I would trust an electronic electoral process if I did the work. Then again, I know that I wouldn't falsify any results. Now, for the rest of the millions of voters out there, they'd have to take a blind leap of faith to believe that I am really as honest as I say I am.
I had talked to some friends about this. We *could* make a legitimate and honest electronic system. It wouldn't cost that much, and would be 99.9999% accurate. The only inaccuracies would come about from funny business at the voting precincts, like dead people voting. A system of my design would never come about. I am a registered "No party affiliation". I can't be encouraged to play by the party lines on either side, but I am just as likely to be bought by either (or both) sides. Being that I don't already align myself to one party, I'm one of those "other" people that they'd never want to run things. I haven't sold out, and I more than likely would be difficult to buy, and would probably post transcripts everywhere as soon as an offer was made.:) That's not good for the good ol' 2 party system, now is it?
I have to wonder what the source of a problem like this is..
Is it poor coding practices, that are making the interface do the wrong thing? I've seen this in web interfaces, if you swap your variables accidentally. How well have these devices been QA tested? Probably not well enough.
Are the touch sensitive screens too sensitive? I was trying to buy at a store, and the touch screen pen would click buttons while it was still about 2 inches from the screen. It made it very difficult to use.
Is it just user failure, where they're dragging the stylus (or touching with their finger) across both boxes, making it see a corrected input to the wrong selection?
Is it an evil conspiracy? Ah, why not, I love conspiracies.:)
Since I don't have access to the offending devices, nor the users, I'll just have to take my guess. I guess #4, evil conspiracy. Occam's razor would tell us differently. Probably option #3 is the correct answer.
I've found people's computers with viruses that commercial softwares have overlooked. I uninstall their paid product (usually with objections), and install the free version of Avast. It catches the viruses, throws warnings about bad things still crawling around, and in the end they're virus free and protected.
More than that, it's what I use on my Windows machine, which is happily virus free, even though I do things that I advise people not to do, and intentionally download dangerous content, which it always catches. It does what they paid for, except now they're getting it for free.
Well, that may be a little harder than it seems unless they get inside help.
Even with seizing a silo, they are still already programmed with a target, and I don't think anyone at the silo knows what the target is. It would probably take someone pretty smart with some heavy equipment months to make one into something they could use. A coordinated launch would probably edge on impossible. Pulling the warhead off, and reengineering it into a usable package would still be one hell of a trick. It's always easy in movies though.:)
Having a "breakaway republic" would take a lot more. Sure, 1000 well armed guys may be able to take a silo through a little dumb luck, but even if they were to say claim Nebraska as a separate republic, there 1.7 million other citizens (2006 US Census) who would need to cooperate. At that point, they would need a way to protect their borders, etc, etc, etc..
I only picked Nebraska as an example, as it is fairly remote in comparison to other US states, and to the best of my knowledge does have at least some active missile silos.
I'm not sure about your 90% weapons ownership. That's probably greatly skewed by gun collectors. Myself, I own two. A friend has a dozen. A 2nd level friend (friend of a friend) has over 100.
If the day comes, and the leadership orders US troops to turn on US citizens, I can only hope enough troops and commanders are aware as you about the odds of the fight, and realize who they should be supporting.
I've played mental war games with quite a few intelligent people over the last year on possible scenarios, where Bush (for the sake of argument) declares martial law on US streets. The scenario usually starts with the idea that Bush is about to leave office under unfavorable circumstances. For example, if McCain wins, he has very little to be concerned about. If Obama wins, there would be quite a bit more potential for an official investigation into unconstitutional actions by this administration.
This sounds far fetched. What if Bush were to be looking forward to jail time and/or a death sentence for his actions? He has committed the crimes, he just hasn't been tried for them yet.
He was nice enough to change the laws, so US troops COULD be deployed on American streets. That was overlooked as the possibility that terrorists staged a major attack, and US troops were the most available and most suited to help. That is a great idea, which I am actually in favor of. Lets use our assets to the best of our ability. Posse Comitatus kept this from happening, which Bush was nice enough to make go away last year.
The 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade is now deployed in the US to handle "civil unrest". Now legally, the US military has the power and authority to arrest anyone they need to. In a recent interview this was clarified that they could arrest Congress, the Supreme Court, or anyone else who may be a "threat". Shoot to kill orders in a period of "civil unrest" are not illegal either.
Back to the intellectual scenarios. Not every soldier would be willing to do this. Some will blindly to as ordered. Hopefully it won't be up to the individual soldiers, but their commanders will make the better decisions.
I hope the day where a leader orders Congress to be arrested, and another unit stands up and says "no" never has to happen, but we're so many steps closer to this than we've been in a long time, it's scary. The Armageddon clock is a lot closer to midnight than it ever should be.
Actually, that was a forward looking statement regarding the state of affairs in the United States.
When the government of a free country becomes too powerful and takes too many freedoms away from that country, it's up to the people to stand up against it. With a 100 mile swath around the entire country where the essentials of our freedoms have been blatantly removed, the core of our freedom has eroded away to nothing.
I tell people, it will only take a little more before the people of the United States of America stand up against it. I don't like the idea. It will not be pleasant, but with the current track that the government is taking only massive reforms will correct it.
If "Big Brother" blows your house down. Then your neighbors. And every neighbor for 6 blocks, eventually the surrounding neighbors will stand up against it. Are there enough bullets or bombs to stop everyone? If they went with that strategy, what would their goal be? To kill everyone? War is never simply about killing the people, it has a goal. Unfortunately the obvious goal of the current administration is financial. The money is to keep them rich. Keep the taxes flowing. Keep making their investments worth more. We've let our keepers down, by not keeping the cash worth as much as it should be. The falling dollar, collapsed housing market, and now collapsing economy are showing that their dollars are almost worthless.
If there was a revolution in the United States, it would be much different.
The government army is obviously better armed. It is also staffed entirely by volunteers. Those volunteers have friends and family in the civilian sector of the United States. That would make most of them less than willing to conduct military missions against civilians of the United States. A percentage would in turn join the people's army.
The people's army would be not so well armed, but have a vast experience base. How many veterans are there from just WWII, Korea, and Vietnam? How many are sitting on at least a few weapons? How many would lend their skills and training to protect the people of the United States of America, exactly what they intended to do when they joined the military originally?
An army of thousands, who would be quickly split, versus an army of millions. The 2005 US Census showed that there were 24.5 million US veterans, only 9.5 million are 65 or older. There are 1.4 million active duty US military.
If it were to come down to it, and I had a seasoned 66 year old veteran standing at my side, I'd have a lot of faith that he would do what he was suppose to. Defend the people of the United States. At very least, I'd rather be on the side of 25 million seasoned vets and their families, AND the available knowledge and equipment provided by dissenting military.
I agree completely, a revolution now is nothing like the American Revolution against England, nor the American Civil War. This will be a new type of war. If things aren't resolved soon, it will unfortunately be one for the history books, assuming anyone survives to write them.
Slashdot Mirror
It really depends on the car. Sure, the cheap ones have a lot of Asian parts.
My car is a good ol' American car (kinda). 2000 Pontiac Firebird TransAm WS/6, a product of General Motors. It was assembled in Canada. :)
The engine is an LS1. The engine block is cast in Ontario, Canada.
I'm pretty sure the body sheet metal and plastics were made in Canada, but I couldn't find a reference for that.
When I changed my water pump and power steering pump, they both had "Made In Canada" stickers on them.
The radio is a Delco/Delphi Monsoon. Delphi has (or had) 29 plants in the US, and others worldwide.
There are various Bosch products in the car too. Those were likely manufactured in the United States, but I believe they have worldwide operations also.
I used to be the senior tech guy for a high bandwidth company, so I have a little insight into this.
Someone else wrote a little bit about the differences in bandwidth cost associated with larger lines, which I can confirm.
As a little customer (residential or small business) you pay a lot more for bandwidth.
As a "little" customer just using 45Mb/s (T3) we paid a particular rate. Sorry, it's been a long time, and I don't remember how much. When we went up to 100Mb/s lines in datacenters, our price dropped to somewhere in the ballpark of $100/Mb/s. When we went up to GigE circuits, our port charges went up, but our bandwidth prices dropped. If I remember correctly, they were down to $15/Mb/s. That was with several GigE circuits, all using lots of bandwidth.
I don't have specifics on Google's network, but once you reach a particular size, you get to start playing in the realm of a provider, which means you can make your own peering arrangements, leasing dark fiber, etc, etc, etc.
Both sides always pay for the bandwidth. Effectively, everything is paid for twice.
I, as a Google user, am paying for bandwidth to be able to access Google.
I, as a webhost, am paying when Google spiders my hosted sites.
Google, as a webhost, is paying for people to access their site.
Google, as a "client", is paying when their software spiders.
Now, is it fair to pick Google out of the thousands of spiders that are crawling daily, and say that they owe based on that? Not really. Their spiders do crawl. They aren't terribly aggressively compared to many. Some download everything over and over. In the past, I've had to block some crawlers. Some are stupid, and will saturate a 100Mb/s line. I've never had one saturate a GigE line, but in time I'm sure it'll happen.
The company I worked for that had multiple GigE lines suffered more from people doing "wget -r example.com". It wasn't just the occasional user, it was many users, frequently. There were hundreds of gigs of data that they could recursively spider on some sites. Effected webmasters and webhosts should put in countermeasures to protect against this. Our primary one identified that a user was pulling more than normal. My "more than normal" was 10x what should be pulled by a customer on a good high speed connection. It would throttle just their traffic. Should they continue, it would start throwing "403" pages to them. Should that not help, their traffic would be blackholed.
Oddly enough, with millions of daily users, those countermeasures never drew complaints. The same millions of daily users would complain about anything. We'd receive emails that someone on a dialup in the arctic circle (just a random place far away from good connectivity) would complain if the page didn't render within 10 seconds.
The original document was funded by a couple ISP's. They want more money. They always do. They simply can't charge the outside connection, but they will reflect it back to their own customers.
If they charge Google, that opens up a whole can of unmanageable worms. So Google gets a bill from every ISP in the world for transit costs. Now they have to bill every company online with services that pull. One of my sites now pulls RSS feeds from hundreds of other sites, and aggregate them online on our site. Should my company be responsible for any more than my bandwidth bills? No. It's up to the other provider to make a decision based on their business on what to do. Do they stop allowing me to pull the RSS feed? Probably not. It in turn brings traffic to their site, and they make more advertising money. Some just shut down their feed over time. Those usually seem to be for other reasons. I've never been asked to stop pulling any RSS feed, and we've been doing this for years.
I've never worked on a project like this, but on other things I've done, I've used it as a learning experience. We always learn how to do things better over time, even if they're not the same type of project.
Depending on the project, I've either kept a copy of my code somewhere safe, or I've just remembered "oh, it took this to do it well", and then do it again but better next time.
I've known people who recycle their code directly. Unfortunately, that makes their errors follow them, and they reuse bloated libraries over (and over and over). On some, I've had to clean up, where I've found multiple things that do the same or almost the same things, and many things that were simply unused and had no application in the new project. Why should you have 10,000 lines of code, where only a couple hundred do the job. Sometimes the leftovers contained subtle but exploitable bugs. Is it worth saving a little time to leave a potentially dangerous bug in place?
Do do know what happened to the last guy who tried to make his own ZPM?
It's classified still, but suffice it to say, he has a lovely home at 37.096175, -116.093645. It's not really visible, being that from the lobby, the elevator only goes down. I suggest you don't try to visit. Some of the neighbors are a bit grumpy, and don't like visitors.
I've recently been here. It wasn't what you would normally expect either.
My step son died on February 10, 2008. He was 13. You can read about what happened here. It was natural, but totally unexpected. One minute, he's fine. The next, he's dead. It wasn't something with blame.
http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=15307
The school was great about notifying the student body, and all of his immediate friends were already told by us. I wanted to let his online friends know what happened. He played a few games online (ok, several), and had friends there. This was the hard part. His accounts were "hacked", because he had used simple passwords. I wanted to teach him everything I could, and part of that is network security. Use good passwords. Combinations of letters, numbers, and characters that make nonsensical words, but have meaning to him. He listened.
Some of the games, I was able to get in through cookies they had left behind that stored his passwords in plain text. Bad security, but helpful. Some at least gave me the userid's. I made a list of the sites he visited that were games, and all the usernames and passwords I could find. I got into most of them, but the one that he played the most I never managed to get into. I wrote to the administrator of the site, told them the situation, and asked for them for help notifying his online friends. I never received a response. They probably thought I was actually up to something bad.
For myself, I have a trusted friend who knows my passwords, and even the PIN's for my ATM cards. If the worst should happen, they can notify everyone I know via email (log in, send to all, big deal). That friend even has the passwords for my servers, so they can update my web sites to let people know what happened to me. My cell phone logs have everyone I talk to in the real world.
Myself, I don't expect a lot after I die. 3 people will show up to the funeral, if it doesn't impose on their schedule. My previously mentioned friend will pull my $200 life savings out of the bank, and share it with my friends. I've already asked my friends to drink heavily and be happy at my funeral. That is unless I'm in an alcohol involved car accident or something. Then it's just tasteless, unless they really want to. :)
Sadly enough, I've already given away the rest of my life, so I have nothing else worth having. Someone will want my car, but that's the last of my prized possessions.
It would have really helped if the story included what the project was. Ya, it would have been blatant advertising, but at least we'd know what we're talking about.
They probably could use a good person or company to evaluate their business model, and adjust it accordingly. There is probably a good way to turn a very nice profit, while offering the free product. Since we don't know what it is, all I can do is guess and compare to things I know.
A friend of mine does web development. One of her larger income streams involves an open source product. The product itself is free. It does a lot of stuff. You can do all the normal open source stuff. They charge for installation and customization. They are busy enough that they farm out customization requests to developers who have proven that they know the code well and can make good customizations efficiently. She spends at least 20 hours a week (at $80/hr) customizing for various customers. She also maintains her own set of add-on modules that she sells and installs. Even though her add-on modules are already written, she charges a set fee for them.
Really, it all depends on the value involved. Her work usually involves the ecommerce side of the application. Even if they spend $1000 for a customization, it can likely bring in hundreds of thousands to her customer. Customers who are happy, who make more money because of the customizations, keep coming back for newer and better customizations. On occasion, I field phone calls for her. Either it's because I'm there and she's busy, or they're asking really hard questions that require outside expert input (I'm the outside expert).
Some customers simply don't know how to work a web page. They'll pay for her to install the software (a simple matter) and configure it (also a simple matter). It's easy to do, but there are plenty of online business owners who have a hard time checking their own email. Sometimes they are so technically confused, they can't make online payments and have to send physical checks because they can't do a bill pay from their bank or do an online credit card payment. It's worth it to them to have it done for $80/hr, rather than mess with it for a few days on their own.
The company still makes good money. They're only farming out the work because they don't want or need to have their own staff doing it. Maybe it's worth it to provide excellent support from experts by giving the work away, than to have to pay a staffer $100k/yr who can do it. Maybe they don't want the headache of keeping customizers in house. Code still gets handed up to the main product for inclusion. Not everything does, because it keeps it profitable for the company to charge for the add on, for their free product. I don't do business models, I do the work. I know some really great business people who figure out where the better profit is, even if they're giving away most of it.
I love these people too. I get $100/hr for my work. Sometimes it's as easy as picking out a new network switch and plugging it in for them. Two hours of drive time (to and from their site) an hour installing, and an hour talking to them about what else they want can get me $400 with no markup on the hardware. Sometimes I sell them Cisco gear that I stock at home because that's one of the things I do. I may have spent $100 on the hardware, but I'll sell it to them at $1000, because it's still much less than current market value.
A couple close shots, but you're far from sinking my battleship. Actually, I probably wouldn't hear if you dropped a cruise missile anywhere you thought I am. But you did a good job of identifying my old camera. Congratulations. :) The question though would be, am I shooting the picture and that's my friend, or is my friend shooting a picture and that's me?
It's still a long long long way from including me as a defendant or a witness in a lawsuit, as is the original topic was.
I have a female friend who programs. She runs into the problem of people know she's a girl, so she obviously can't program. I've worked with her, and know she can. Sometimes I run into problems that she can solve. Sometimes she runs into problems that I can solve. That's teamwork though, not a failure of either of us to be able to do our work.
Sometimes I've gone talked to her clients, and said exactly what she said, and they believe it when I say it, because I'm a guy and must know what I'm saying. It's not good, but I don't mind backing her up when she needs it. Really, she shouldn't need it though. Now we just have to convince the rest of the world of that.
I resemble that remark.
I use "JW Smythe" as my online name. It's all over the place. Luckly, there are a few other people who use that or variations of it "J.W. Smythe", "John W. Smythe", "Jon Smythe". Pick out the real me. Of course, it's not my real name, but it sounds reasonable. If someone I'm not expecting calls me by my alias, I ignore them, or ask them who they're talking about.
My real name oddly enough is even more popular, by Google searches. There are lots of "me" all around the world, all doing different things. It keeps people wondering if my real name is yet another pseudonym, or it's really me. :)
Only clients and friends know my real name. They also have read my little essay on why I use an alias. Some people still ask for clarification of why. Why? Because there are a lot of weird people out there, and I don't want to go around to the millions of freaks out there saying "Hi, my name is ____ , come look for me." I've known call center folks who have been harassed, threatened, and stalked, because they've used their real names. Even when I've answered phones, they get my pseudonym of the day (or of the job). I use names like some guys use girlfriends. Use it until it's burnt, then pretend it never existed.
The reason of liability when some corporate lawyer decides to play rough applies too, but that's pretty low on my priority list. I worry more about the millions of lunatics floating around the Internet. :)
I would normally say "it's an Acer", but if you do a little research, you'll find something interesting about WalMart products. Virtually every product in WalMart, is made specifically for WalMart. They are made slightly cheaper so WalMart can lower the final cost and always undercut their competition.
I found this out with Sony HandCams. One place I worked had about a dozen of them for live web broadcasting (make assumptions, you're probably right). Two broke, so we went to a Sony authorized repair shop. He looked at them, or more specifically at the model, and heard our complaint. He then told us "I can't fix that". He wasn't trying to be difficult, so he explained that this model was a WalMart model. The broken component was something that breaks very quickly. He can't get replacements for it. If it had been another model from another retail outlet, he would have been more than happy to fix it, but it probably wouldn't have broken anyways.
We had saved $50/ea on them. If I recall correctly even though they were simply sitting on tripods, attached by RCA cable to digitizers, 90% of them had some sort of failure within a year. I took one of the few surviving ones, just because we retired all of them. I left it charging on my desk, and one day it just started opening the tape door on it's own. I could close it, and sometime in the next few days it would just open it like someone hit the eject button.
If you want something that will survive, don't buy it at WalMart, even if it looks just like the item being sold somewhere else, and only has a very subtle variation on the model number. WalMart makes their money selling crap at a price lower than the other stores can sell their slightly better crap. They know when it breaks, you will probably go back to WalMart and buy another one, blaming the manufacturer, not WalMart business practices.
Read this story about Snapper discontinuing business with WalMart
or this Business Week piece on lower quality Walmart products
This frequently varies.
Years ago, we wanted to build a couple nice database machines. Quad Opteron 848, when they had just been released, running a 64 bit Linux distro. I researched parts, put together my list, and presented it to the bosses. One of the bosses had a hardon for Dell, so we took my proposed configuration and sent it over to a Dell rep. They came back with a 32 bit machine for something like 400% of my price. I then sent him over my list with prices on it and told him that he had to come back with something comparable both hardware and price wise. He came back with something that had 50% of the memory, 25% of the storage, and half the processors (32 bit) for the same price.
Because we wanted bleeding edge fast, we were out of luck. They couldn't do it for us without bleeding us dry.
Another time, someone I know wanted a new server. He looked for what Dell was clearing out, and found something not quite so new. It was nice, just not as nice as he could have bought. He saved 25% by buying what Dell was clearing out of their warehouse. But, in doing that, he also bought 2 laptops and 8 workstations at regular price as part of a "package" deal that was suppose to be to his advantage. If I had done everything (except the laptops) I could have saved him a lot of money. The major issue became, he needed it "now", and I would take about a week or two to get the parts in, assembled, and tested.
For him, he thought it was great, except we were shipping stuff back and forth trying to get the order right for two weeks. He was excited to have their parts warranty. He had a drive fail about 6 months later. It happened Friday afternoon, and we started working with their support. They kept us going until 6pm at which point they said "we can have a replacement to you Monday before 10am". He bought the warranty with the understanding it was a 4 hour turnaround. He was told that was only Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm. Since it was 6pm, it wouldn't be handled until Monday morning. {sigh}
For the most part, I use commodity parts, especially in wearing parts like drives. I could have gone to the store and picked up a new drive and had it fixed by Friday evening. I don't know a local vendor for SCSI drives, and he didn't want to spend money on something that was suppose to be fixed under warranty that he spent extra money on.
I work on Dells, only because companies I've worked with use them. I'm not fond of them. I'm actually usually annoyed. But hey, they're paying the bill, they can buy the replacement parts from Dell.
I agree totally. That's what I was trying to say, mostly. There are frequently circumstances that make things not quite so easy. What if they lost their DB and didn't have backups. Oops. Putting a nice note up is nice, but doesn't resolve the fact that some people depended on the information. But, if a resource is so important to them, why didn't they make a copy also?
In my case, it's a non-profit project, so I consider it similar. I'm not paid to keep backups. If my machine should go down, it's up to me if I can put it back up or not. I guess the biggest part of doing a project is your love for it. I've been screamed at by significant others because I bought new hardware, when I should have spent it on something else. Once upon a time, I ran Slashcode. It is (or was) much heavier than some other options. I had to run it on 3 servers when my load got high enough. I went to the store and picked up two machines to keep it alive on. Why? Because I love my project. Since then, it's moved to other software, and then finally to my own code. Slashcode was good but heavy. PHPNuke was good and light, but exploitable. My code? Better, lighter, and has very good input validation. So far it hasn't been abused or exploited. (no, this isn't an invitation to anyone please)
Honestly, the day I decide not to do it any more, before I shut it down, I'll offer it to someone. Probably anyone. I'd accept an offer from someone who would be trustworthy with confidential data (the email addresses of users), and I could trust would keep the spirit of the site alive. If they do or don't, that's really up to them as soon as I give up control. My users gave a level of trust by providing their email addresses to me, even though I know many are one-use email addresses. Before I'd ever relinquish control, I would notify the users of the pending change, and provide a method to purge their information entirely.
I was looking for information on a news story we were researching 4 years ago. I searched for the contact's email address, and found it listed on another site in a similar situation. The contact had signed up to that site. When they gave up the site, they put their full user list on the front of their site. They aren't maintaining the site, and the user information is in clear view for anyone to use. Not nice. Confidential when I take information means confidential, not "until I decide to hand it out to the world."
This is old news, but still interesting.
Several years ago, I was living in Los Angeles. My day job was IT work, and my hobby was (and still is) running a new site. I very frequently (3-4 days per week) worked in downtown LA, and would drive home between 7pm to 3am.
One night, I came out of downtown onto the 110 North, and moved over to the inside lanes fairly quickly, so I could be prepared to take I-5 North. I came up behind a car with a website name on the back. I didn't really think anything about it, until I saw the driver hold a video camera backwards and was filming me. Ok, weird people. I noted the name, and went to the web site, electronicharassment.com. Check archive.org on or about July 2004, the site is now just a links page.
Here's a snippet from the site.
---
Since I started my research on this topic, when the harassment
commenced the number of websites on this topic has doubled, and the level
and the intensity of the harassment have quadrupled. I'm now followed
everywhere, even out of town. Once they followed me to the airport and I
wondering when I go visit family will they follow me there as well? They
laser and microwave me in class, at the theater, driving, even at the
funeral of a friend, they stung me during services. There is no respect,
and they endanger the lives of others, especially when chasing me on the
freeways.
I lived in 5 different places and that's not including hotels. Within days
they are set up in an apartment or homes adjacent to where I was residing and
the harassment resumes.
When I go out of town I'm followed by a convoy of vehicles, SUV, sports
cars, and lastly the old and new white vans, although they are occasionally a
different color.
---
There was more information on the site and linked from there about how to document the harassment, which included photos and videos of the harassment. Recording all the people following you. It really read of some insanity, but if you were really the target of some weird military psyop, wouldn't you seem insane?
In following the links on the site, it became obvious that this was paranoia being reinforced by other nutjobs on web sites (excuse my professional headshrinker terminology).
Since I run a news site, I thought it could make an interesting story if there was really a story there. I didn't want a story about another nutjob in California. There's a million nuts, and twice as many stories. Maybe there was some wild conspiracy. Hey, it could happen. I sent off the following email looking for further information. It was never answered. I guess crazy people don't need help from the press, even if it could stop the mystery agency from harassing them.
--- begin email
From: "Editor - Free Internet Press"
To: [censored]
Subject: surveillance
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 00:30:52 -0700 (PDT)
Good evening,
I was behind what I believe was your car on the 110 in downtown LA this
evening. The red [censored]. I noticed you were filming my car. I thought
this was a bit odd, and I noted the site name on the bumper
(http://electronicharassment.com/), so I could see if it explained why
you were filming. Apparently it does.
If it makes you feel better, the [censored] that was behind you
wasn't following you. I was leaving a work site, going to where I'm
currently staying. I may have pulled in quickly behind you, but I
assure you, it wasn't to follow you, it was because I needed to get over
to that side, to catch the 5.
If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you some questions. I'm asking, with .
the possible intention of running a story on you on our site,
http://freeinternetpress.com/
We will run your story completely anonymously. It's not necessary for
you to tell us your name, or an
Unfunded hobbiest resources have absolutely no "responsibility" to stay in operation.
It would be nice if they made an effort for someone else to take over the project, but in the end, it's their pet project to do with (or kill off) as needed.
It's the same as a commercial product, except when the company can't fund it any more, they can simply drop it and the users are really SOL. They don't necessarily open it up for the general users.
Of course, when something happens, people complain. One of the things I do is run a news site. We ask for, and appreciate donations, which remove the ads from the page. We get a few (a very few). If/when things happen, people complain. If they don't get their nightly newsletter, they complain. If they can't get to the site, they complain. If something happens to the server, they complain. The revenue from ads and donations don't cover the most basic of costs. They wouldn't even cover the power consumption of the server, much less bandwidth, hardware upgrades, SSL cert renewal, domain renewals, etc, etc.
The biggest reason that I keep running it is because it's parked on my personal web server. I have quite a few things tucked away on there, that I use frequently from wherever I may be sitting. If one day I decided to stop running the news, and put up a notice saying it's all gone, then that's the way it is. There is no "responsibility" to open source my code, redirect my domain to another source, or anything like that. Luckly, I run it because I like it. My thousands of readers like it. Maybe someday it will even support itself, but until then, if I decide to shut down the server tomorrow and never turn it back on, I have no obligation to do anything.
Bush had 8 years and lots of help to mangle lots of things..
It's easy to break something. It's a lot harder to fix it. Corruption is very hard to clean up. Your list is of some of the finest points of the f***ups done by the Bush administration. I'll hit some of your points though.
> Do you think he'll get the Dems to undo the Patriot Act?
I suspect this will be cleaned up and corrected to restore our rights as citizens.
> Do you think he'll get to the bottom of and stop the Wiretaps on US Citizens?
The "bottom of" was pretty clear. They were authorized from the top, and made their way down to listen on every person in the US. Stopping it should be easier with a new executive order superseding the last. Of course, he'll have to be careful and evaluate why, what, and what good they have done. There may be issues outside of what has made it to mainstream media that have been resolved.
> Do you think he'll have us 100% out of Iraq in the next week? Month? Year? Decade?
Obama has a 16 month plan. The standing Iraqi government demanded an 18 month pullout. Even still, I doubt it will be "100%" out. Consider previous conflicts. The US maintains bases in countries that it previously occupied. Vietnam may be the only exception to this. I can't think of any bases there offhand. We would likely be out of the daily combat against citizens of Iraq, but we'll likely maintain a presence in the area.
> Will he magically fix the economy? If so, how long? What exactly is he going to do?
Did the current administration magically destroy the economy in days? weeks? months? No. They overlooked an obvious problem, which allowed the rich who could invest in huge tracts of homes and sell them at an outragous profit. They overlooked offshoring American jobs to help large corporations increase their profit margins, as the US economy suffered. Nothing was done to mitigate this, such as increasing international trade tariffs, and limiting the low quality and proven dangerous products coming into our country. Lead tainted childrens toys and melamine tainted foods are two excellent examples of how the government has failed to protect it's people, at the advantage of large corporations.
> Will he walk on water?
He'll likely at least stay afloat, rather than sinking as his roll model George W Bush provided. As of March 2008, George W Bush took 879 vacation days at his ranch. With so many issues to attend to, any good leader (like, good, not even great or excellent) would be working to resolve things, not ignoring them. Will President Elect Obama actually work, rather than giving speeches full of blatent lies to pacify people into believing there's nothing wrong? I doubt it. He seems like the type of man who will actually be honest with the people. If he does, it would be like walking on water in contrast to Mr. Bush's "leadership" over the last 8 years.
I don't know how this ever made it to any news source. I'm trying to remember how long ago the first time I noticed it. It's been at least 10 years. My first phone that did it was an old Nextel.
I would trust an electronic electoral process if I did the work. Then again, I know that I wouldn't falsify any results. Now, for the rest of the millions of voters out there, they'd have to take a blind leap of faith to believe that I am really as honest as I say I am.
I had talked to some friends about this. We *could* make a legitimate and honest electronic system. It wouldn't cost that much, and would be 99.9999% accurate. The only inaccuracies would come about from funny business at the voting precincts, like dead people voting. A system of my design would never come about. I am a registered "No party affiliation". I can't be encouraged to play by the party lines on either side, but I am just as likely to be bought by either (or both) sides. Being that I don't already align myself to one party, I'm one of those "other" people that they'd never want to run things. I haven't sold out, and I more than likely would be difficult to buy, and would probably post transcripts everywhere as soon as an offer was made. :) That's not good for the good ol' 2 party system, now is it?
I have to wonder what the source of a problem like this is..
Is it poor coding practices, that are making the interface do the wrong thing? I've seen this in web interfaces, if you swap your variables accidentally. How well have these devices been QA tested? Probably not well enough.
Are the touch sensitive screens too sensitive? I was trying to buy at a store, and the touch screen pen would click buttons while it was still about 2 inches from the screen. It made it very difficult to use.
Is it just user failure, where they're dragging the stylus (or touching with their finger) across both boxes, making it see a corrected input to the wrong selection?
Is it an evil conspiracy? Ah, why not, I love conspiracies. :)
Since I don't have access to the offending devices, nor the users, I'll just have to take my guess. I guess #4, evil conspiracy. Occam's razor would tell us differently. Probably option #3 is the correct answer.
I second that motion.
I've found people's computers with viruses that commercial softwares have overlooked. I uninstall their paid product (usually with objections), and install the free version of Avast. It catches the viruses, throws warnings about bad things still crawling around, and in the end they're virus free and protected.
More than that, it's what I use on my Windows machine, which is happily virus free, even though I do things that I advise people not to do, and intentionally download dangerous content, which it always catches. It does what they paid for, except now they're getting it for free.
Within 15 minutes of an armed insurrection in NYC, Slashdot would have it posted, and there would be no less than 20 Goatse posts. :)
I'd be willing to say that there are already a good number of folks armed with safeties off east of the Mississippi already.
Well, that may be a little harder than it seems unless they get inside help.
Even with seizing a silo, they are still already programmed with a target, and I don't think anyone at the silo knows what the target is. It would probably take someone pretty smart with some heavy equipment months to make one into something they could use. A coordinated launch would probably edge on impossible. Pulling the warhead off, and reengineering it into a usable package would still be one hell of a trick. It's always easy in movies though. :)
Having a "breakaway republic" would take a lot more. Sure, 1000 well armed guys may be able to take a silo through a little dumb luck, but even if they were to say claim Nebraska as a separate republic, there 1.7 million other citizens (2006 US Census) who would need to cooperate. At that point, they would need a way to protect their borders, etc, etc, etc..
I only picked Nebraska as an example, as it is fairly remote in comparison to other US states, and to the best of my knowledge does have at least some active missile silos.
I'm not sure about your 90% weapons ownership. That's probably greatly skewed by gun collectors. Myself, I own two. A friend has a dozen. A 2nd level friend (friend of a friend) has over 100.
If the day comes, and the leadership orders US troops to turn on US citizens, I can only hope enough troops and commanders are aware as you about the odds of the fight, and realize who they should be supporting.
I've played mental war games with quite a few intelligent people over the last year on possible scenarios, where Bush (for the sake of argument) declares martial law on US streets. The scenario usually starts with the idea that Bush is about to leave office under unfavorable circumstances. For example, if McCain wins, he has very little to be concerned about. If Obama wins, there would be quite a bit more potential for an official investigation into unconstitutional actions by this administration.
This sounds far fetched. What if Bush were to be looking forward to jail time and/or a death sentence for his actions? He has committed the crimes, he just hasn't been tried for them yet.
He was nice enough to change the laws, so US troops COULD be deployed on American streets. That was overlooked as the possibility that terrorists staged a major attack, and US troops were the most available and most suited to help. That is a great idea, which I am actually in favor of. Lets use our assets to the best of our ability. Posse Comitatus kept this from happening, which Bush was nice enough to make go away last year.
The 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade is now deployed in the US to handle "civil unrest". Now legally, the US military has the power and authority to arrest anyone they need to. In a recent interview this was clarified that they could arrest Congress, the Supreme Court, or anyone else who may be a "threat". Shoot to kill orders in a period of "civil unrest" are not illegal either.
Back to the intellectual scenarios. Not every soldier would be willing to do this. Some will blindly to as ordered. Hopefully it won't be up to the individual soldiers, but their commanders will make the better decisions.
I hope the day where a leader orders Congress to be arrested, and another unit stands up and says "no" never has to happen, but we're so many steps closer to this than we've been in a long time, it's scary. The Armageddon clock is a lot closer to midnight than it ever should be.
Actually, that was a forward looking statement regarding the state of affairs in the United States.
When the government of a free country becomes too powerful and takes too many freedoms away from that country, it's up to the people to stand up against it. With a 100 mile swath around the entire country where the essentials of our freedoms have been blatantly removed, the core of our freedom has eroded away to nothing.
I tell people, it will only take a little more before the people of the United States of America stand up against it. I don't like the idea. It will not be pleasant, but with the current track that the government is taking only massive reforms will correct it.
If "Big Brother" blows your house down. Then your neighbors. And every neighbor for 6 blocks, eventually the surrounding neighbors will stand up against it. Are there enough bullets or bombs to stop everyone? If they went with that strategy, what would their goal be? To kill everyone? War is never simply about killing the people, it has a goal. Unfortunately the obvious goal of the current administration is financial. The money is to keep them rich. Keep the taxes flowing. Keep making their investments worth more. We've let our keepers down, by not keeping the cash worth as much as it should be. The falling dollar, collapsed housing market, and now collapsing economy are showing that their dollars are almost worthless.
If there was a revolution in the United States, it would be much different.
The government army is obviously better armed. It is also staffed entirely by volunteers. Those volunteers have friends and family in the civilian sector of the United States. That would make most of them less than willing to conduct military missions against civilians of the United States. A percentage would in turn join the people's army.
The people's army would be not so well armed, but have a vast experience base. How many veterans are there from just WWII, Korea, and Vietnam? How many are sitting on at least a few weapons? How many would lend their skills and training to protect the people of the United States of America, exactly what they intended to do when they joined the military originally?
An army of thousands, who would be quickly split, versus an army of millions. The 2005 US Census showed that there were 24.5 million US veterans, only 9.5 million are 65 or older. There are 1.4 million active duty US military.
If it were to come down to it, and I had a seasoned 66 year old veteran standing at my side, I'd have a lot of faith that he would do what he was suppose to. Defend the people of the United States. At very least, I'd rather be on the side of 25 million seasoned vets and their families, AND the available knowledge and equipment provided by dissenting military.
I agree completely, a revolution now is nothing like the American Revolution against England, nor the American Civil War. This will be a new type of war. If things aren't resolved soon, it will unfortunately be one for the history books, assuming anyone survives to write them.