Where can I find a legit copy of Windows for $50? Does it include the other software you need to make it "work", like Office, Exchange Server, and the other servers?
Let's instead take 1% of the Brazillian population and say that they will begin to donate their time to help with the existing free projects. That will mean 1,550,000 new testers, documenters (in Portuguese, no less!) and coders!
3) The e-mail system of the house of representatives is being replaced by a free software one,
Damnit, with the mention of another hole found in Sendmail I hope it wasn't that.
Oh, I must of missed that news because the internet was down due to two massive Microsoft Windows worms. I'll be sure and tell the sendmail authors how I feel when I can finally open up my firewall to allow incoming mail again.
You are prejudiced. You assumed that most users of Linux are long-haired Army-hating hippies.
You forget that many people that use Linux, in fact, many people who run Open Source projects are conservative and love the Army. I am glad that the Army took the time to make a game for the Linux platform. I think it is a good idea to target the Linux users. I think the Army needs forward thinking people who are technically inclined and familiar with Linux and the Open Source development model, conservative or liberal.
I am going to download it and show my friends. Maybe my two friends who are in the Marines won't be interested -- one of them is in Iraq right now. But my other friends who love to make a buck and spend it on charities will enjoy it.
As far as the video game not being representative of reality, I don't think the commercials and radio spots do much to represent reality either. The point is to get the people who listen to the ads or play the game to think about the Army as an option for their future.
If one person steps into a recruiting center to ask about what life in the Army would really be like, then they would've succeeded.
(And I don't want to hear any crap about recruiters that lie. When a recruiter lies, they go to prison, and the person they lied to is allowed to go home. Try joining the Army and telling your sergeant in drill camp that your recruiter never told you it would be this hard. You'll see first hand how seriously they take that.)
Only through open processes can a democracy or a democratic republic be maintained. How would you feel if any of these processes were closed and not a matter of public records:
- Lawmaking
- Budget writing
- Judicial Hearings
If our election process becomes secret in any way shape or form, then our democracy is doomed. Elections are the key to our government, and the second the people believe that their vote isn't counted, then our nation will fail. I believe Republicans, Democrats, and most any other party will agree with this.
What kind of government would legislate, let alone enforce, such a stupid law?
I am not setting the USA on a pedestal here. We have our own problems with control freaks in government.
That you cannot disable or remove an RFID after you have purchased an item -- that's a problem that needs to be fixed with elections if possible, or bloody revolutions if necessary.
If razors cost more, I am going to buy less. I'll probably use one for an entire week (like I did in High School when I could barely afford my school clothes).
If razors are cheaper, I might even use two or three in one day. I like sharp razors and I notice that by the time I hit the left side of my face, the razor has already begun to dull. So I would love to be able to use two or three in a day without worry of the cost.
Compare the number of people who shave today to the number of people who shaved 100 years ago. It was actually fashionably to grow a beard back then. Many people did so, but not because they were fashion conscience, but because shaving was too expensive for them. Either razors were prohibitively expensive, and difficult to maintain, or the barber shop was too far away and cost too much.
Razors are not a "fixed market" as you call it. If they are cheaper, people buy and use more. If not, they won't. The cost of the razor is more than the price, of course. It includes things like how much pain the razor induces, how long it takes to shave with it, and whether or not it has RFID.
Capitalism works on greed. It's amazing how so many selfish people could produce something so wonderful.
Why don't you avoid that store that sells its plastic bag and go somewhere else? If you can't find a store you want to go to, why don't you look at other sources for your goods?
Sitting there and complaining about the lack of perceived options means you are only wasting your time. Why don't you look around and find a greedy solution for yourself? Hint: buy things cheap, sell them expensively to as many people as you can, and pocket the difference or give it to your kids.
All profits that corporations make only go into the back pockets of the corporate executives and the company shareholders. Sometimes a corporation offers incentives to its employees, but that is pretty rare.
Of course, all the costs of obtaining said profits go into the pocket of the employees (via wages) and the company's suppliers. And then all the service companies that provided the telephones, the power, the building, the maintenance, etc, get their cut too.
That could be a problem. But I am pretty sure you can identify the people who want to remove the tags by their tinfoils hats and their nondescrip black overcoats. The store could offer a service to such people and show them the items that don't have RFIDs, or maybe even disable the RFID chip as the customer leaves the store with the item.
True, true. If the market bears the current prices, and a drop in costs does not change the fact that profits are maximized at that price, then you are correct.
Consider this. You are selling 300 units of an item at $3.00 everyday, at a cost of about $2.50 a pop. Every bit of research says that that is the price that you are maximizing profits. If you lowered the price, you sell more units, but not enough to actually increase profits. If you raise the price, the number of customers drops so much that profits are reduced.
All of a sudden, you find a way to sell the exact same item at a cost of $2.00! While your profits will double at the current price, who's to say they won't increase even more if you lower the price a tad?
Okay, so you are upset because Gillet is trying to understand who is buying what and why.
I imagine a future day when I walk into a store and everything I want to buy is within arms reach. I look forward to a day when people create entire lines of products just to make me (and people like me) happy. I hate to admit it, but this "fit in with the crowd" stuff drives me nuts. I am an individual, I want "jgardn" stamped on everything everwhere I go!
What's so terrible about that?
This RFID / photograph the customer / call them and ask them questions / etc... stuff is all to get the companies to understand who you are and what they can do to make you happy. Why is that a crime?
See, businesses try to make a buck, just like you try to make a buck. While they get more profit from being able to sell something with less cost, you will get lower prices as well. How's that you say?
Let's pretend two companies are selling the exact same product. If company A finds a way to sell that product with less cost than company B, they are going to lower prices to attract more customers to them so that they get more of the profit. Company B will quickly adapt or die. If they adapt, they will have to lower their prices as well.
I'll tell you one place this has succeeded: At the gas pumps. Gas is actually selling cheaper today than it did 30 years ago. How is this possible? The costs of finding oil, extracting the oil, and processing the oil into gasoline, as well as the costs of sending it around the planet until it gets into your gas tank, have dropped considerably. Oil companies and gas stations that have refused to follow the trend and lower their prices have died. All the rest compete daily to get the lowest price while still making a buck.
No, I haven't. Personally, if people want to watch me walk all the way home, they are welcome to.
You have to see that with trillions of these devices implanted in everyone, no one will be able to distinguish you from the noise. If they are able to, then they would've been able to visually follow you anyway. What's the big deal about that?
Again, if you really don't like them, remove them. But this feels like a whole "tinfoil cap" thing.
Why are people so upset with RFIDs? The only possible reason I can see is that they are afraid of being tracked all the way home with them. That is a simple matter of removing the tag when you leave the store.
Using RFIDs will save billions of dollars a year. Those savings will translate to lower prices for you. What can possibly be wrong about that?
I think this is just another case of Luddites without anything better to do.
BANANA is a new term coined by House Leader Rep. Tom DeLay. He's at the forefront of the anti-liberal crusade, but he hardly ever makes the headlines.
His point is that environmentalism is not bad. We do need to keep our lakes and forests clean. But at what costs? Does keeping the lakes and forests clean mean that we can't lay new power lines, build new, modern nuclear facilities or clean burning coal or natural gas power plants? Does keeping the forests and lakes clean mean we can't build new roads, cities, and parks?
Absolutely not. There is a way we can build new power plants, factories, and all the modern things necessary for our modern civilization, without destroying our lakes and forests. But there are BANANA environmentalists who refuse to budge and allow the construction to continue.
Their true aim in life is to destroy the American way of life. They hate the way we use power to heat our hot dogs, play video games, and perform heart surgery. They hate the way we drive our children and their friends to soccer games in our SUVs. They hate the way we consume and consume, and produce to match it. They are hell-bent on destroying our way of life and making America look a little more like France.
By regulating the temperature of the burn and what chemicals in what proportions are introduced during the burn. There are currently Japanese garbage-burning facilities that burn plastics and other nasty stuff into harmless gasses like water and C02.
If all else fails, you can just up the temperature until the substance burns as a plasma. Then the only byproducts are the individual atoms themselves. As a bonus, you can sort the atoms by weight with electromagnetic fields.
Or you can do this new procedure and bypass the burning completely. Superheat the substances and process the organic chemicals until out comes natural gas and oil. The other stuff that is non-organic can be filtered out quite easily.
1) Obtain a voting card. Voting cards are issued to eligible voters who provide proof of their eligibility. Things like database checks against known felons and dead people are done well in advance. Checks for current residency and such are also performed. People who try to register unlawfully are prosecuted. Keeping them in jail until the election results are finalized is something logical.
When they obtain the card, they type in their secret pin number so that no one, not even the person helping them, can know it. They are told about the dangers of writing down the secret pin number. They are informed about what to do should they lose the card or forget the pin number.
Should they lose the card or their pin number, they have to present identification to the county again. Again, people who attempt to unlawfully act in the behalf of someone else are prosecuted.
The voter can then vote in the elections over the internet or in the polls (which is really through the internet as well). County representatives should be available at the polls to help with people who have forgotten their pin number or lost their cards. I think we should allow people to vote something like a month in advance, if they so desire. This requires that the ballot not be changed during that time period, so that we don't get the confusion that existed for the Lautenberg/New Jersey deal.
They authenticate over HTTP using the Digest Authentication method. Their username is their voter number, and their password is their pin number.
They are allowed to vote once. However, they can view the results of their vote at any time, and change them before the election is finished. After the election is finished, they can still view their votes for several years afterwards.
Extensive auditing of the code and the databases should be performed. Every line of code should be available for the public to see. After the election, anyone should be able to view the database of votes -- but they only map voter numbers to votes. The voter numbers to real people information is kept secret at the county offices, and are unavailable for public use.
The record of which votes were changed when should also be available. Note that people will be allowed to change their votes up until the set time on voting day. This might reveal voter confusion or fraud.
There are several reasons why someone might want to set up a base on the moon.
Because the moon has lower gravity, it would make an ideal space station.
The moon has a higher content of metals than the earth's crust. Plus, you can dig up entire craters and no one will notice. You can set up low-G manufacturing processes, dump all the waste chemicals into the moon, and no one will care.
Because the moon is on top of the earth, it is really easy to launch attacks on the earth from the moon with missiles or bombs. Whoever can get the hardware on the moon first will dominate the entire earth.
The problems outweight the costs. There's the whole problem of radiation. Solar flares release enough dangerous radiation that it would kill anyone who stayed on the moon's surface for an extended period of time. We would need a lot of shielding to protect us from it, more than is reasonable to manufacture at this time.
Also, launching stuff into space is one thing, but it is more expensive to get it to the moon and back.
When these two problems are solved, then you may see people beging to establish bases on the moon.
You apparently live close enough to the equator that you haven't noticed the need for extra sunscreen vs. when you were a kid.
Gee, what kind of fantasy world do you live in? If you think the ozone layer is thinning at the equator, you must've missed the gaping ozone layer at the south pole. I base my perceptions of reality on observed fact and honest studies, not fantasy and whatever crap comes from Hollywood.
Earth holds an atmosphere because the mean velocity of molecules within it is much lower than escape velocity. The real question is why we don't have a much _thicker_ one (and that's explained by the oceans assisting in converting much of it to minerals). In order for the atmosphere to be boiled off in less than geologic time, temperature would need to increase several-fold, requiring solar light flux to increase by an order of magnitude or two (as a physicist, you are aware of the laws governing radiative heat loss). This is more along the lines of "going nova" than "having a flare".
Is the sun capable of flaring to a point where the earth's atmosphere and oceans are boiled away? You don't deny this, you only accept the fact that it is indeed possible. Why hasn't this happened yet? No one knows. What can we do to prevent it? The answer: Absolutely NOTHING. We could detonate giga-ton fusion bombs near the surface of the sun and it would have absolutely no effect.
I keep getting modded down because the issues I stand for are perceived as politically incorrect. It is PC to say that we are all going to die because we are polluting the earth. It is not PC to state that the sun has far more impact on the earth than we can ever hope to have. One is fact, one is fiction. You decide whether you will believe fairy tales or hard science.
Now perhaps you can explain to me how it is okay for trillions of little fishies to poop in the ocean, but if a cruise ship dumps its sewage in the ocean, that somehow destroys the environment.
Maybe you can explain how a few thousand gallons of the most noxious chemicals dumped into the ocean can ever effect anymore than a localized spot of the ocean. Does it retain its concentration worldwide? How much of any chemical would you have to dump into the ocean to get a concentration of one part per billion?
Let's do the math.
There are 1,300,000,000 km3 of water in the ocean. So one part in *billion* will require 1.3 km3 -- or 1,300,000,000,000,000 liters.
Let's put that in perspective. What if everyone who uses gasoline in the United States dumped an equivalent amount of arsenic into the oceans. It would require 2,600 years to get a 1 part per billion concentration. Safe drinking water is currently 50 parts per billion or less of arsenic. The EPA wants to change that to an insane 10 parts per billion. So it would take 26,000 years to make the ocean water unsafe to drink due to arsenic contamination according to the EPA, but 130,000 years according to current standards.
You are going to argue that the localized effects of wherever you are dumping the chemicals is going to have a higher contamination. That is true, but that is localized, and represents a very, very small part of the ocean. 3,000,000 km2 is small (less than 1%) compared to the 362,000,000 km2 of the ocean. Oh, you are concerned about the coastline? Even if we dumped the chemicals in a 5,000 km stretch of coastline, that is less than 1% of the 504,000 km of existing coastline in the world.
See, cold, hard science says that anything we do has almost no effect on the ocean. It is far too huge for us to even consider having an effect. Just like we can't change the sun even with our most destructive fusion bombs, we can't change the ocean if we made it a national priority.
I am serious. I am a physicist, so I understand the scale of the things you are trying to imagine.
Let me explain. 99% of the mass of the solar system is contained in what object? The sun. The other 1% is mostly Jupiter.
How much biomass exists on the face of the earth? How much of that is human? You'll be kidding yourself if you even think it approaches 1%.
How many of the so-called environmentally harmful chemicals found in nature are produced by humans? You'll be kidding yourself if you think that even approaches 1%.
The ocean is far huger than you give credit. The effects we have on the ocean are incredibly small compared to the effects of volcanoes, earthquakes, and the sun. The effects of all the little fishies in the ocean crapping in the ocean have a far greater impact than a couple of cruise ships dumping sewage overboard, and yet what do environmentalists freak out about?
The solar flares we are experiencing are tiny, even during the so-called solar peaks. A larger than normal solar flare would literally burn our atmosphere off. The atmosphere is such a small, delicate part of our earth that many people are wondering why we still have one.
You environmentalists run around as if humans were the most important thing in the universe. We aren't. In fact, the earth doesn't even show up as something important in the solar system. Humanity doesn't even show up in the global scale of things. Volcanoes burp more chemicals into the atmosphere than we produce in decades. That's a fact.
Those studies you site are sobering. They are proving that we humans can't do anything to prevent the next heat wave or the next ice age. They are proving that no matter what we dump into the atmosphere, it has little to no effect. They are proving that all the 70's environmental crap -- overpopulation, ice age, global warming -- is all exactly that -- crap. Why do we continue to listen to the "prophets" who wear the guise of scientist when we know they have been proven wrong and wrong again?
Moore's Law is the observation that when people are allowed to freely interact without the burden of government, they produce at an exponential rate.
We can apply it to other industries and seen the same effects.
For instance, before deregulation, long distant phone calls were expensive. Today, they are dropping in price, while the QOS and coverage is expanding.
The software industry, due to almost complete government non-interference, is able to take software to completely new levels every two to three years. The hardware industry, thanks to non-interference, is doing the same.
Compare and contrast with heavily regulated industries. Is your medical care costs going down, while the benefits are expanding? Are houses getting cheaper to build, while becoming better and bigger? Are your cars getting safer and cheaper, with stronger yet more fuel efficient engines? The reasons why these industries do not experience the effects of Moore's Law is because government is a roadblock to their progress.
Moore's Law will cease to apply the second government decides to start regulating the computer industry.
You wouldn't even try to replicate it. You would use GM to genetically modify some bacteria so that you can let the natural processes manufacture it for you in long strands.
GM does have uses. Too bad illegitimate scientists try to put a stigma on it.
Bottom line, idiot, is that humankind has absolutely no effect on the ocean compared to what the earth itself and the sun dish out.
Imagine the sun flared. Just a little one. What could happen to the earth? Why, the entire atmosphere could be blown away, and the oceans could dry up. The deserts would turn to glass. All from a small solar flare. You think nuclear weapons are dangerous? The sun is far more dangerous. And we have absolutely no control over it.
What about a volcano? How many megatons of carbon dioxide and other noxious chemicals does that dump into the atmosphere, not to mention the pollution in the oceans?
Slight variations in the amount of radiation the sun puts off has tremendous effects on the climate here on earth. The algae blooms are there because the sun put them there. We had nothing to do with it.
You are an idiot. spouting out half-truths and whining about it. Go crack a real science book, not the pseudo-crap they are passing off in high school today. Go learn about how big the sun really is, and how dangerous it really it. Go take a look at how much water there is in the ocean, and try and figure out how much pollution we could actually dump in there if we really tried. You'll see that we would have barely any effect at all.
And how do you pillage the ocean? The natural resources in the ocean are going to die anyway. Rather than allowing the fish to float to the bottom of the ocean and rot and pollute the ocean, we are harvesting the excess every year so that we can feed a starving world. How is that pillaging?
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Where can I find a legit copy of Windows for $50? Does it include the other software you need to make it "work", like Office, Exchange Server, and the other servers?
Let's instead take 1% of the Brazillian population and say that they will begin to donate their time to help with the existing free projects. That will mean 1,550,000 new testers, documenters (in Portuguese, no less!) and coders!
Oh, I must of missed that news because the internet was down due to two massive Microsoft Windows worms. I'll be sure and tell the sendmail authors how I feel when I can finally open up my firewall to allow incoming mail again.
You are prejudiced. You assumed that most users of Linux are long-haired Army-hating hippies.
You forget that many people that use Linux, in fact, many people who run Open Source projects are conservative and love the Army. I am glad that the Army took the time to make a game for the Linux platform. I think it is a good idea to target the Linux users. I think the Army needs forward thinking people who are technically inclined and familiar with Linux and the Open Source development model, conservative or liberal.
I am going to download it and show my friends. Maybe my two friends who are in the Marines won't be interested -- one of them is in Iraq right now. But my other friends who love to make a buck and spend it on charities will enjoy it.
As far as the video game not being representative of reality, I don't think the commercials and radio spots do much to represent reality either. The point is to get the people who listen to the ads or play the game to think about the Army as an option for their future.
If one person steps into a recruiting center to ask about what life in the Army would really be like, then they would've succeeded.
(And I don't want to hear any crap about recruiters that lie. When a recruiter lies, they go to prison, and the person they lied to is allowed to go home. Try joining the Army and telling your sergeant in drill camp that your recruiter never told you it would be this hard. You'll see first hand how seriously they take that.)
Hear, hear!
Only through open processes can a democracy or a democratic republic be maintained. How would you feel if any of these processes were closed and not a matter of public records:
- Lawmaking
- Budget writing
- Judicial Hearings
If our election process becomes secret in any way shape or form, then our democracy is doomed. Elections are the key to our government, and the second the people believe that their vote isn't counted, then our nation will fail. I believe Republicans, Democrats, and most any other party will agree with this.
What kind of government would legislate, let alone enforce, such a stupid law?
I am not setting the USA on a pedestal here. We have our own problems with control freaks in government.
That you cannot disable or remove an RFID after you have purchased an item -- that's a problem that needs to be fixed with elections if possible, or bloody revolutions if necessary.
Yes, I do stop shaving if I can't afford it.
If razors cost more, I am going to buy less. I'll probably use one for an entire week (like I did in High School when I could barely afford my school clothes).
If razors are cheaper, I might even use two or three in one day. I like sharp razors and I notice that by the time I hit the left side of my face, the razor has already begun to dull. So I would love to be able to use two or three in a day without worry of the cost.
Compare the number of people who shave today to the number of people who shaved 100 years ago. It was actually fashionably to grow a beard back then. Many people did so, but not because they were fashion conscience, but because shaving was too expensive for them. Either razors were prohibitively expensive, and difficult to maintain, or the barber shop was too far away and cost too much.
Razors are not a "fixed market" as you call it. If they are cheaper, people buy and use more. If not, they won't. The cost of the razor is more than the price, of course. It includes things like how much pain the razor induces, how long it takes to shave with it, and whether or not it has RFID.
Is that specific enough for you?
Capitalism works on greed. It's amazing how so many selfish people could produce something so wonderful.
Why don't you avoid that store that sells its plastic bag and go somewhere else? If you can't find a store you want to go to, why don't you look at other sources for your goods?
Sitting there and complaining about the lack of perceived options means you are only wasting your time. Why don't you look around and find a greedy solution for yourself? Hint: buy things cheap, sell them expensively to as many people as you can, and pocket the difference or give it to your kids.
Just as easily, a physicist could construct a machine that could look backwards in time to observe where someone has been in the past.
They call them "cameras". You can buy them in the store with money. And they work quite well.
But if you failed to capture that moment in history, you can always question witnesses or look at other evidence (fingerprints, tire tracks, etc...)
Welcome to reality. Privacy doesn't exist, get over it.
All profits that corporations make only go into the back pockets of the corporate executives and the company shareholders. Sometimes a corporation offers incentives to its employees, but that is pretty rare.
Of course, all the costs of obtaining said profits go into the pocket of the employees (via wages) and the company's suppliers. And then all the service companies that provided the telephones, the power, the building, the maintenance, etc, get their cut too.
And you still get the product at a cheaper price.
And this is evil how?
That could be a problem. But I am pretty sure you can identify the people who want to remove the tags by their tinfoils hats and their nondescrip black overcoats. The store could offer a service to such people and show them the items that don't have RFIDs, or maybe even disable the RFID chip as the customer leaves the store with the item.
True, true. If the market bears the current prices, and a drop in costs does not change the fact that profits are maximized at that price, then you are correct.
Consider this. You are selling 300 units of an item at $3.00 everyday, at a cost of about $2.50 a pop. Every bit of research says that that is the price that you are maximizing profits. If you lowered the price, you sell more units, but not enough to actually increase profits. If you raise the price, the number of customers drops so much that profits are reduced.
All of a sudden, you find a way to sell the exact same item at a cost of $2.00! While your profits will double at the current price, who's to say they won't increase even more if you lower the price a tad?
Okay, so you are upset because Gillet is trying to understand who is buying what and why.
I imagine a future day when I walk into a store and everything I want to buy is within arms reach. I look forward to a day when people create entire lines of products just to make me (and people like me) happy. I hate to admit it, but this "fit in with the crowd" stuff drives me nuts. I am an individual, I want "jgardn" stamped on everything everwhere I go!
What's so terrible about that?
This RFID / photograph the customer / call them and ask them questions / etc... stuff is all to get the companies to understand who you are and what they can do to make you happy. Why is that a crime?
You took the bait.
Yes, it does translate to lower prices for you.
See, businesses try to make a buck, just like you try to make a buck. While they get more profit from being able to sell something with less cost, you will get lower prices as well. How's that you say?
Let's pretend two companies are selling the exact same product. If company A finds a way to sell that product with less cost than company B, they are going to lower prices to attract more customers to them so that they get more of the profit. Company B will quickly adapt or die. If they adapt, they will have to lower their prices as well.
I'll tell you one place this has succeeded: At the gas pumps. Gas is actually selling cheaper today than it did 30 years ago. How is this possible? The costs of finding oil, extracting the oil, and processing the oil into gasoline, as well as the costs of sending it around the planet until it gets into your gas tank, have dropped considerably. Oil companies and gas stations that have refused to follow the trend and lower their prices have died. All the rest compete daily to get the lowest price while still making a buck.
No, I haven't. Personally, if people want to watch me walk all the way home, they are welcome to.
You have to see that with trillions of these devices implanted in everyone, no one will be able to distinguish you from the noise. If they are able to, then they would've been able to visually follow you anyway. What's the big deal about that?
Again, if you really don't like them, remove them. But this feels like a whole "tinfoil cap" thing.
Why are people so upset with RFIDs? The only possible reason I can see is that they are afraid of being tracked all the way home with them. That is a simple matter of removing the tag when you leave the store.
Using RFIDs will save billions of dollars a year. Those savings will translate to lower prices for you. What can possibly be wrong about that?
I think this is just another case of Luddites without anything better to do.
BANANA is a new term coined by House Leader Rep. Tom DeLay. He's at the forefront of the anti-liberal crusade, but he hardly ever makes the headlines.
His point is that environmentalism is not bad. We do need to keep our lakes and forests clean. But at what costs? Does keeping the lakes and forests clean mean that we can't lay new power lines, build new, modern nuclear facilities or clean burning coal or natural gas power plants? Does keeping the forests and lakes clean mean we can't build new roads, cities, and parks?
Absolutely not. There is a way we can build new power plants, factories, and all the modern things necessary for our modern civilization, without destroying our lakes and forests. But there are BANANA environmentalists who refuse to budge and allow the construction to continue.
Their true aim in life is to destroy the American way of life. They hate the way we use power to heat our hot dogs, play video games, and perform heart surgery. They hate the way we drive our children and their friends to soccer games in our SUVs. They hate the way we consume and consume, and produce to match it. They are hell-bent on destroying our way of life and making America look a little more like France.
By regulating the temperature of the burn and what chemicals in what proportions are introduced during the burn. There are currently Japanese garbage-burning facilities that burn plastics and other nasty stuff into harmless gasses like water and C02.
If all else fails, you can just up the temperature until the substance burns as a plasma. Then the only byproducts are the individual atoms themselves. As a bonus, you can sort the atoms by weight with electromagnetic fields.
Or you can do this new procedure and bypass the burning completely. Superheat the substances and process the organic chemicals until out comes natural gas and oil. The other stuff that is non-organic can be filtered out quite easily.
1) Obtain a voting card. Voting cards are issued to eligible voters who provide proof of their eligibility. Things like database checks against known felons and dead people are done well in advance. Checks for current residency and such are also performed. People who try to register unlawfully are prosecuted. Keeping them in jail until the election results are finalized is something logical.
When they obtain the card, they type in their secret pin number so that no one, not even the person helping them, can know it. They are told about the dangers of writing down the secret pin number. They are informed about what to do should they lose the card or forget the pin number.
Should they lose the card or their pin number, they have to present identification to the county again. Again, people who attempt to unlawfully act in the behalf of someone else are prosecuted.
The voter can then vote in the elections over the internet or in the polls (which is really through the internet as well). County representatives should be available at the polls to help with people who have forgotten their pin number or lost their cards. I think we should allow people to vote something like a month in advance, if they so desire. This requires that the ballot not be changed during that time period, so that we don't get the confusion that existed for the Lautenberg/New Jersey deal.
They authenticate over HTTP using the Digest Authentication method. Their username is their voter number, and their password is their pin number.
They are allowed to vote once. However, they can view the results of their vote at any time, and change them before the election is finished. After the election is finished, they can still view their votes for several years afterwards.
Extensive auditing of the code and the databases should be performed. Every line of code should be available for the public to see. After the election, anyone should be able to view the database of votes -- but they only map voter numbers to votes. The voter numbers to real people information is kept secret at the county offices, and are unavailable for public use.
The record of which votes were changed when should also be available. Note that people will be allowed to change their votes up until the set time on voting day. This might reveal voter confusion or fraud.
There are several reasons why someone might want to set up a base on the moon.
Because the moon has lower gravity, it would make an ideal space station.
The moon has a higher content of metals than the earth's crust. Plus, you can dig up entire craters and no one will notice. You can set up low-G manufacturing processes, dump all the waste chemicals into the moon, and no one will care.
Because the moon is on top of the earth, it is really easy to launch attacks on the earth from the moon with missiles or bombs. Whoever can get the hardware on the moon first will dominate the entire earth.
The problems outweight the costs. There's the whole problem of radiation. Solar flares release enough dangerous radiation that it would kill anyone who stayed on the moon's surface for an extended period of time. We would need a lot of shielding to protect us from it, more than is reasonable to manufacture at this time.
Also, launching stuff into space is one thing, but it is more expensive to get it to the moon and back.
When these two problems are solved, then you may see people beging to establish bases on the moon.
Gee, what kind of fantasy world do you live in? If you think the ozone layer is thinning at the equator, you must've missed the gaping ozone layer at the south pole. I base my perceptions of reality on observed fact and honest studies, not fantasy and whatever crap comes from Hollywood.
Is the sun capable of flaring to a point where the earth's atmosphere and oceans are boiled away? You don't deny this, you only accept the fact that it is indeed possible. Why hasn't this happened yet? No one knows. What can we do to prevent it? The answer: Absolutely NOTHING. We could detonate giga-ton fusion bombs near the surface of the sun and it would have absolutely no effect.
I keep getting modded down because the issues I stand for are perceived as politically incorrect. It is PC to say that we are all going to die because we are polluting the earth. It is not PC to state that the sun has far more impact on the earth than we can ever hope to have. One is fact, one is fiction. You decide whether you will believe fairy tales or hard science.
Now perhaps you can explain to me how it is okay for trillions of little fishies to poop in the ocean, but if a cruise ship dumps its sewage in the ocean, that somehow destroys the environment.
Maybe you can explain how a few thousand gallons of the most noxious chemicals dumped into the ocean can ever effect anymore than a localized spot of the ocean. Does it retain its concentration worldwide? How much of any chemical would you have to dump into the ocean to get a concentration of one part per billion?
Let's do the math.
There are 1,300,000,000 km3 of water in the ocean. So one part in *billion* will require 1.3 km3 -- or 1,300,000,000,000,000 liters.
Let's put that in perspective. What if everyone who uses gasoline in the United States dumped an equivalent amount of arsenic into the oceans. It would require 2,600 years to get a 1 part per billion concentration. Safe drinking water is currently 50 parts per billion or less of arsenic. The EPA wants to change that to an insane 10 parts per billion. So it would take 26,000 years to make the ocean water unsafe to drink due to arsenic contamination according to the EPA, but 130,000 years according to current standards.
You are going to argue that the localized effects of wherever you are dumping the chemicals is going to have a higher contamination. That is true, but that is localized, and represents a very, very small part of the ocean. 3,000,000 km2 is small (less than 1%) compared to the 362,000,000 km2 of the ocean. Oh, you are concerned about the coastline? Even if we dumped the chemicals in a 5,000 km stretch of coastline, that is less than 1% of the 504,000 km of existing coastline in the world.
See, cold, hard science says that anything we do has almost no effect on the ocean. It is far too huge for us to even consider having an effect. Just like we can't change the sun even with our most destructive fusion bombs, we can't change the ocean if we made it a national priority.
I am serious. I am a physicist, so I understand the scale of the things you are trying to imagine.
Let me explain. 99% of the mass of the solar system is contained in what object? The sun. The other 1% is mostly Jupiter.
How much biomass exists on the face of the earth? How much of that is human? You'll be kidding yourself if you even think it approaches 1%.
How many of the so-called environmentally harmful chemicals found in nature are produced by humans? You'll be kidding yourself if you think that even approaches 1%.
The ocean is far huger than you give credit. The effects we have on the ocean are incredibly small compared to the effects of volcanoes, earthquakes, and the sun. The effects of all the little fishies in the ocean crapping in the ocean have a far greater impact than a couple of cruise ships dumping sewage overboard, and yet what do environmentalists freak out about?
The solar flares we are experiencing are tiny, even during the so-called solar peaks. A larger than normal solar flare would literally burn our atmosphere off. The atmosphere is such a small, delicate part of our earth that many people are wondering why we still have one.
You environmentalists run around as if humans were the most important thing in the universe. We aren't. In fact, the earth doesn't even show up as something important in the solar system. Humanity doesn't even show up in the global scale of things. Volcanoes burp more chemicals into the atmosphere than we produce in decades. That's a fact.
Those studies you site are sobering. They are proving that we humans can't do anything to prevent the next heat wave or the next ice age. They are proving that no matter what we dump into the atmosphere, it has little to no effect. They are proving that all the 70's environmental crap -- overpopulation, ice age, global warming -- is all exactly that -- crap. Why do we continue to listen to the "prophets" who wear the guise of scientist when we know they have been proven wrong and wrong again?
Moore's Law is the observation that when people are allowed to freely interact without the burden of government, they produce at an exponential rate.
We can apply it to other industries and seen the same effects.
For instance, before deregulation, long distant phone calls were expensive. Today, they are dropping in price, while the QOS and coverage is expanding.
The software industry, due to almost complete government non-interference, is able to take software to completely new levels every two to three years. The hardware industry, thanks to non-interference, is doing the same.
Compare and contrast with heavily regulated industries. Is your medical care costs going down, while the benefits are expanding? Are houses getting cheaper to build, while becoming better and bigger? Are your cars getting safer and cheaper, with stronger yet more fuel efficient engines? The reasons why these industries do not experience the effects of Moore's Law is because government is a roadblock to their progress.
Moore's Law will cease to apply the second government decides to start regulating the computer industry.
You wouldn't even try to replicate it. You would use GM to genetically modify some bacteria so that you can let the natural processes manufacture it for you in long strands.
GM does have uses. Too bad illegitimate scientists try to put a stigma on it.
Bottom line, idiot, is that humankind has absolutely no effect on the ocean compared to what the earth itself and the sun dish out.
Imagine the sun flared. Just a little one. What could happen to the earth? Why, the entire atmosphere could be blown away, and the oceans could dry up. The deserts would turn to glass. All from a small solar flare. You think nuclear weapons are dangerous? The sun is far more dangerous. And we have absolutely no control over it.
What about a volcano? How many megatons of carbon dioxide and other noxious chemicals does that dump into the atmosphere, not to mention the pollution in the oceans?
Slight variations in the amount of radiation the sun puts off has tremendous effects on the climate here on earth. The algae blooms are there because the sun put them there. We had nothing to do with it.
You are an idiot. spouting out half-truths and whining about it. Go crack a real science book, not the pseudo-crap they are passing off in high school today. Go learn about how big the sun really is, and how dangerous it really it. Go take a look at how much water there is in the ocean, and try and figure out how much pollution we could actually dump in there if we really tried. You'll see that we would have barely any effect at all.
And how do you pillage the ocean? The natural resources in the ocean are going to die anyway. Rather than allowing the fish to float to the bottom of the ocean and rot and pollute the ocean, we are harvesting the excess every year so that we can feed a starving world. How is that pillaging?
OH NO! THE EARTH IS DOOMED!
Bush has unleashed the marines with lasers to destroy the world's oceans.
Meanwhile, he is dumping billions upon billions of oil into the oceans.
All the little fishies are going to die! Whatever are we going to do?