I understand your delima, but the point is that no vote is not a democracy.
I respect your right not to vote, your right to choose no-one if you so feel, but what is so critical to our country and system is that you go and vote, even if that vote is for no-one at all, quite literally meaning going to the polling place, looking at whats on the board, and opting not to cats a vote for anyone at all.
I know it sounds/seems like a watse of time, but it isnt, we need to work on getting everyone in our country who is eligible to vote to the polls, and to have all those who are agnostic or totally unsatisified with their options in the process. That way they may actually take an intrest in the canidates and the issues surrounding their locality.
I am in strong support of a tax deduction for voting (something small like 100$ deduction with some sort of stub), to literally make it more compelling for our voters to participate. Many people oppose this because of the prospects of "paying people to vote" or even more often (when i speak with politicians and representatives directly) they claim that it shuold be a "privlege" to vote, and incentivising it is contrary to that.
Those opinions may be somewhat correct, and i dont disagree with them on deeper levels, but in my mind the most important thing we can do as a society is to take the necesary (non-corruptive) steps to get as many voters to the polls as possible.
So we dont have a country run by less than 30% of registered voters... which is less than 15% of our population.
Think about it. A true democracy depends on everyone voting, even if the vote itself is blank.
--VISION
The Goverment has too much infrastrucutre to just change their operating systems, and far too many potential compromises in the form of hundreds of thousands of employees (millions?). To ask them to make the sweeping and drastic changes to all their agencies wouldnt be a monumental task, it would be a near impossible one.
Instead, just pull the plug. That is the internet one. Seriously, completely remove all the agencies from the Web, firewall them down to ZERO access to non-goverment networks.
In each office place setup 4-5 computers (unconnected to the network) with internet access... if employees need access to the net at large... they can use those machines.
I know its not a pleasant solution to the workers, but very few goverment positions actually require access to the net. It would go a long way to helping that 2 billion dollar loss in productivity mentioned not too long ago.
While the offices are segmented, the Goverment IT guys can work on more effectivly deploying their machines in a manner that can restore access to each computer, but until then there's little reason 99% of these employees need direct access.
To employ an argument comparing holistic medicine as being in some manner equivilent to terrorist suicide bombing methods is fecisous at best.
Holistic medicine is a voluntary and chosen practice, people who choose to practice it do so upon their own beliefs and choices, you can no more claim it to be murder than to say companies that sell butter or cars are killing people because they cause increased rates of heart attacks or car accidents.
Your contention that goverments inherently attempt to censor information contrary to their intrests holds weight and is exhibited consistently throughout history, one has only to look at wars to note how often... and important the practice has been used.
the real question is extent and content. No system can be completely "good" and/or "benevolent" as the very act of censorship restricts the rights of some for the benefit of others, however speech in concerns that render grave or immenent and real danger to a multi-tude of people are commonly restricted under what is generaly understood to be a common sense and practical public safety concern.
When the public safety aspect is over-extended beyond the real of "real" danger we begin to see the abuse... which is nearly inevitble, but the issue is the extent. China is without much question a hallmark of severly over extended censorship which goes ridiculously further beyond the bounds of reasonable public safety in comparison to the US.
To put the two on equivilent terms is spurious and intelectually insulting.
Hezbollah and other organizations like it, or closely affiliated with it... actively procure funds and engage in violent attacks without forwarning on civilian populations againts the wishes of their domestic populations. While they enjoy support of their respective publics as a symbolic resistence to the west, their methods are generally NOT supported and regularly denounced by those communities.
BULLSH*T
Sweden may have a low population density given its full volume, but that is such a misleading statement i could almost slap you for being fesicous.
http://www.ipasihcar.net/expacc/images/swpop270.gi f
you will find swedens distribution of population to be quite compressed into the more habitable regions, as in canada where 90% of the population lives within 50 miles of the US-Canda Border. You could claim canada has a low population density, which would be true... but only if you consider the massive nearly un-inhabited regions, same as with sweden.
The metrics of your local provider who youve neglected to mention are unknowable... i could offer 100/10 mb connections to everyone in my area if i wanted too provided my "city" is geogrphicly small enough, and my central pipe is big enough to handle spikes. Woop dee do.
Things become difficult when you have millions of customers spread across several counties.
This doesnt necesarily negate swedens better than average telecom, but dont misrepresent these things.
However racism depends on sevreal factors for recognition, to someone insulated or otherwise un-exposed to a diversity of cultures on a personal and frequent basis such an ad would be unlikely to convey any racist undertones to them.
Racism greatly depends upon historical perspective. Without a history of oppression or ill-will surrounding race semi-fresh in the minds of the viewers it would be very difficult for any given imagery or prose to evoke such a moniker.
However, in the ad we have a white woman all decked out in white mencing a black woman in black, attached with "white is comming" as a slogan. Intentional or not, satire or not, literal or not, product advertising or not... it carries obvious racial unertones.. even if its creators have no recist intentions, it is almost blatantly made in a manner delibratly based upon racial issues or at the minimum a HUGE leap of total ingnorance to the world we live in.
Of course the intentions are all the more obvious by the markets they have decided to place it in, as the non-US release clearly indicates they knew just how the US (with a much more diverse population, and more open race relations issues) would react.
Bottom line is, the ad puts a black person in a position of total infiriority to a white person, with a tag line that emphasizes that aspect.
Its inflamatory at best.
As a note of intrest there are the other two images, which "balence it out"...
* White woman over black woman.
* Black woman over white woman.
* White woman and black woman on equal footing
But of course this is pointless, the other two images have little to no relevancy in the worlds current climate of race relations. (of course if we had a succeeding couple hundred years of black oppression of the masses, and subsequent social revolution... the situation would likely be just as inflamatory in the opposite direction).
The real issue here, is such an advert reinforces negative stereotypes and relationships in our still healing society. While subtle it would serve to influence our children giving them (children of all races) cause to somehow believe just a "tiny" bit more in white supiriority, seeding racists, low self esteem, etc...
Until the rifts between under-represented and marginalized minorities and the power wielding majority (still overwhelmingly white - and largely male) are diminished, such forms of "advertising" will remain bad mojo.
A company of this size and portfolia could litaerally drag the entire economy to a standstill if allowed to patent everything.
It's one thing to have a whole bunch of different companies pushing competing patents, but when several large (and supposedly competing?) firms get together and pool their patents into one collossus, then you can be certain noone else will be allowed to enter any market remotly connected.
This is not a good thing.
I would say thats a pretty over the top and almost criminal reaction.
Your daughter does indeed have a right to defend herself, as we all do. But telling her to take an action that is far more severe and dangerous than the bullying is a dubious reaction at best. I understand your desire to have her fight back and make her boundries known to her aggressor, but using THAT type is force is NOT justifiable.
The larger concern here is she could have killed the girl if that nose had broken wrong. And we must also remember that this is how the path to guns in school starts. The gangs started off with just fists, they moved on to sticks, then chains and knives, and eventually guns.
If we lived in a society with less control mechanisms (lack of police and school staff, etc...) then i could see a need for more drastic measures. But you run a real risk of hitting the wrong kid who, feeling that their "reputation" is on the line, may come after your child with a baseball bat after school one day.
I went to several schools, some extremely wealthy and "good", and others the opposite, and ill tell you in bopth schools i saw the same stuff. Some kid gets beat-up by someone he was bullying, and he and his friends get together after school and ambush him with weapons.
The best way to handle the problem is certainly to teach your child to stand up and fight back within the context of the situation (dont go for the throat if its someone you have to deal with every day... as in tommorrow, and the day after), but also to actively and aggresiovely pursue police, school, disciplinarian, and parental measures (talk to the other kids parents).
I also got picked on in school, i fought back and never backed down even to my own suffering sometimes... most of the kids left me alone because they just want an easy picking. But this one kid went to far (aimed a very real looking BB gun at me, some rocks thrown, etc...)... after fighting him (grabbing the gun like a kid who thinks hes about to get shot!!)... i went STRAIGHT to the cops. Didnt give a s*&^ what the other kids thought.
He of course called me a rat, etc... and when the other kids started to say the same, i told them straight up, you aim a gun at me i dont give a f$$# im going to the cops and F%$# you if you think im a rat for it.
They never brought it up again, and they never messed with me again.
Its all about respect and confidence. If you exude confidence, even if your choices arent liked, and your tactics shuned, kids will tend to leave you be. If they feel you arent certain in how your going to react, or if they think your weak in defending yourself (physically, legally, or verbally).. THEN they will look to exploit you.
Just be carefull of escalation. If they know youll bring the cops... theyll leave you alone (unless their totally our of their minds... in which case your screwed anyway)
In fact, natural selection has clearly operated at a huge scale, when Europeans settled every corner of the globe, while indiginous populations have disappeared or mingled. Genes associated with those Europeans have spread, while many others have nearly disappeared.
This is an example of group selection, and it has selected many genes at once; some of them may have helped Europeans in their conquests, others may have just been along for the ride.
Are you of the Nazi philosophy? They also believed in the genteic supiriority of the aryan (european) race, and also thought such was a justification in the might is right sense.
Evolution is a much larger and longer process, requiring thousands upon thousands of generations and much more powerfull selection factors than just being more technologicly advanced at the time.
Much more importantly, your statements actually reflect a dirth of knowledge in history during and prior to the 17th-20th centuries. In the last 300 years or so, the europeans have been very succesfull, but i assure you, they didnt suddenly evolve a supirior genetic make-up in that time to cause so. One would have to argue that the european war making and technical advantages were from beter gene makeup, from there you would have to defend european advances against their basis... since a great portion of the european knowledge base they improved upon derived from asia and africa (gunpowder, paper, algerbra, the compass, etc...), at which point it becomes painfully obvious that genes have little to do with it.
Would you conisder islam and/or the moors to have been geneticly supirior as they took over much of southern europe and old rome for a time? Would you consider ghengis khan and the hordes he left behind equally geneticly supirior when they conquested more of the known world than has ever been done before? How about the japanese conquest of asia? the egyptians & nubians who ran for 10000 years or more? etc...
Most new genetic development is resultant of mating selection pressures and epidemic disease immunity's. We have had countless plagues sweep the world until the mid 20th century (anti-biotics, medicine, etc..) which aggresivly thinned out those ill-equipped to survive them. We have also semi-steadily reduced those who are geneticly pre-disposed to extreme anti-social behavior (not necesarily criminal behavior but "impaired" or "stunted" behavior), and we can expect as time marches forward for those who are less capable of intergrating with the essentials of modern society will be less likely to reproduce, etc...
However, the shifts in political / population drifts are not in any way related to some sort of genetic supiriority, and even more importantly, genetics is more of a massive numbers game than a conquest (distribution) model. In the long run the asians are currently "winning" with massive genetic presence in the human species, and europeans are next to last.
Dont confuse genetics with politics.... its a really bad idea... which has resulted in some really bad consequences.
Maybe the thought of an exciting career working closely with balding, over-weight, potato-chip eating, diet dr pibb drinking, socially inept, 12 hour funk from working without moving, and red-stapler asking, porn addicted 90 pound eye-glass wearing (weird foreign accent too?) wimplings isnt exactly the ideal or "cool" environment with mass appeal to the females.
Im sure there's always that 19% whose intrests in computer science balenced with their ability to tele-commute are powerfull enough to overcome any obstacle. Even being harassed into wearing their hair like Leia.
--not that programmers are ALL like the above, but its a pretty tough image to beat, mainly because theres is a substantial segment of programmers who do unfortunately fit the bill.
My number one question is would this force verizon to stop filtering inbound port 80?
I would pay for someone elses services if verizon wasnt a monopoly in my area, and their port 80 filtering is beyond aggravating.
will this finally force the providers to stop messing with the connections they sell for their own greedy gains?
Its just a matter of time before they start to force people to pay "premiums" for access to additional "services" via different ports if left unchecked.
Yes there are many work arounds, but they are all nasty kludges, and with supirior firewalls they will be able to filter based on application making the problem even harder to work around.
I hope this bill will start the process of forcing them to give us what we pay for without artifical limitations.
This is a recurring issue that returns everytime a new media comes to bear.
The issue of violence in video games is fairly devisive as the main portion of law makers are not amongst the demo-graphic of game players. Thus it's far easier to run an anti-video game campaign when your voter base and politcal makeup is on average over 25 years old.
Comicly, somehow everyone has missed the boat in regards to the fact the crime and violence in the US has been on a steady decline since the 70's. How can you argue these games and other mediums (gangster rap, death metal, movies, etc...) are causing increases in violence when the stats clearly show we are becoming less violent as a culture?
Maybe these mediums are serving as an outlet for violent behavior which would otherwise be exerted in the very real world with very real consequences.
Another point it seems many people willfully miss under the guise of free speech and/or desire for games with illicit content, is that there may well be a serious moral, ethical, and social problem associated with content that glorifies and/or encourages anti-social behavior.
This is quite a paradox, crime is on the wane, so its hard to say if these games are causing a problem or helping it. However as an adult who does play GTA and every FPS i could get my hands on, i can definitly say this isnt the type of stuff ill want my children playing. And while many would argue(and i do agree somewhat) that this falls into the realm of parental control and proper parenting, i say that our society has made such parenting increasingly difficult to do.
The average white collar family has TWO working parents who spend 50-60+ hours a week at work and commute another 10+ hours. Blue collar families face similar if not worse conditions leaving less and less time for adequate parental supervision. Maybe the solution is a reduced work week, but i dont think ANY of us believe that will happen in the near future (not to mention the effect on our economy), so in the interim i cant help but support better controls for parents.
Those controls are inadequete and nearly laughably easy to circumvent right now, as such the only moderation available without industry support is through strenuous law. Which puts us directly in the path of free speech.
How do i, as an adult gamer maintain my right to view whatever content i want, and leave the industry free to PRODUCE that content, without endangering the wellfare of my child in todays society? A society where even as a top-tier earner it is difficult for me to keep my child in a safe environment of my choosing.
This is a very serious problem which everyone seems to be avoiding by pointing at each other.
sadly enough it may be DRM is the only dependable solution. Now THATS a scray thought.
Engadget has pics and specs (128mb) from last month, this is a pre-production model they somehow got a hold of, im guessing the real deal will be nicer looking, and probably have a good deal more ram.
Maybe apple insisted on a click wheel with numbers in it (like touch button rotary...:) )
Bandwidth and VOIP applications is obviously subject to a bottleneck limit if the threshhold is too low (less than 128kb up is gonna be tough)
However, 768kbp is WAY more than adequate to satiate the average small office, and is overkill for a family.
My office is 100% VOIP & asterisk.... we currently have 9 VOIP lines running fine (4 vonage, 5 broadvoice... phaing out vonage)
The key here that everyone seems to miss is that bandwidth costs are only aggragate during active phone calls.
If you've ever installed a PBX (traditional) you'll be remiss not to have backup POTS lines with that office Voice T1. When you plan how many "hard lines" you want available to the system in the event of an emergency, you normally account for the average simultaneous call vaolume during peak hours (an office of 20 people float around 6 simultaneous calls depending on the industry)
So while you may have a family of twelve, it's HIGHLY unlikely everyone will be wanting to use the phone at once..... you'd be lucky to have four phone calls at once.
This is when you start to add up your real-world "peak" bandwidth usage. While it may technicaly possible for all twelve people to pick up the phone at the same time, it's extremely unlikely.... the current "standard" codec g.711 Ulaw (US) is a 64kbps codec (per stream... 64k up, 64k down).... so 768kbps up should (theoreticaly) support 12 SIMULTANEOUS phone calls.
in the real world, network congestion, overhead, latency, other traffic (web pages, file uploads/downloads, streaming, etc...) should make a pragmatic sys admin cut the number in half to be safe..... thats 6 SIMULTANEOUS calls on a 768 connection.
Latency is a bigger issue than bandwidth for just about any home/office except the larger ones. And i assure you, if you have that many people who need to make calls.... get two seperete DSL's and call it a day (because it will still be cheaper).
Now if you want to account for use of alternative codecs (GSM & speex come to mind)... your talking progressively smaller bandwidth needs (8, 16 and 32!!!)
Currently, using asterisk, i have users with "softphones" in europe (were in the US), with a dozen SIP phones on site, and 9 total VOIP lines.... and were fine. this is all on a single 3mb/768kb verizon DSL (dont ask).
your biggest concerns are network lag (ISP flooding during peak times) and latency.... DSL is outstanding for VOIP as far as latency go's.
When high-res Video conferencing becomes common, then youll have major headaches.
Well, i think im to late to join the party on this one, however i should lay out a couple of things, expecially in reflection of all the previous comments.
The obsession some people place upon what they consider to be the "proper" form of a language is often the source of an undo amount of grief and ironicly... confusion.
The English language has evolved greatly within the span of only a couple hundred years, and the predominent force behind it has been "slang". If your wondering what i mean, pick up a book of shakespeare. It is near to impossible to understand ANYHTING written in the old english that preceeded that, and shakespeare along with his contemporaries is also a task to go through.
Should you decide to fast foward a bit into 18th century texts, and then along to early 19th century, you'll find the language less grueling, yet still alien enough to make the task more daunting than today's literature. This isn't because they were smarter or more verbose in those times... it's because the language has changed, and along with the times it's change is an evolution.
This same evolution took latin into italian, french, spanish, portugese, etc... And is a constant process.
While a lot of people are confronted with the conflict between their learned notions of "correct" english and the newer forms of the same meanings, many others simply do not notice... and some don't care.
The essence of language is effective communication, that is taking the course of action which you hope will convey your meaning in the most percise and direct format possible givin your audience and the necesary words to accomplish the goal. If your speaking in the southern section of the US you'll likely convey your thoughts in a southern twang shuold you have any inclination or desire to reach people more effectively. The same applies through-out all the different regions of the english speaking world. Australians, Brits, Canadians, etc...
Secondarily, Short hand speech, and the various amorphisms that have entered popular culture are not to be discounted as simply "mangling" the language. Prominent words such as FUCK and GOLF were once simple slang words (acronyms both) along with a host of other words which we take for granted today.
So while you may see "cya" as nothing short of a terrible abreviation of "see you", if it is used long enough and widely enough it will likely enter the language as a new word many decades from now.
Someone commented that shortening a 5 letter word into 3 isnt saving any time. I beg to differ. In shortening a whole sentance of words down to significantly less letters, expecialy in the context of commonly spoken terms, and doing so on a longer term IM conversation... Your reducing a great deal of physical effort as well as conveying the meaning you want to send effectively.
For exmaple while programming, i get hit with IM's that need confirmation. "alt-tab" -- "k" -- "alt tab".
in about a second i have switched from my script to the IM, aknowledged the other persons comment, and returned to my work.
Should i have siwthced over and said "Okay"?... or maybe "Yes, i understand and agree".... or maybe i should eshew ever saying "OK" at all since it is not really a "word". While im at it i should probably drop Snafu and laser, and all those other lovely acronyms we use from my words and just spell em out.
Im sure most people will acknowledge that there are some "slang" or formerly "slang" words that have such a obiquotus (sp) use they're most certainly acceptable as "real" words. However they didn't just appear over-night, they were at first only known by those who were in the "in" crowd, and then slowly became popular in their region, until over time they had become universal.
Hackers, script kiddies, etc... have a propensity for shortening anything and everything they can into the simplest measures. This stems from several main components.
A: Programming. You learn that less letters is a LOT less wor
Personally, i like the ipod earbuds for several reasons.
A: The wire they make them out of is similar to flyfishing line, in that it doesn't tangle very easily, and when it does it's very easy to undo.
B: The tings are tough, i've got two pair that have survived continual beatings without succumbing to the bending shorts or various other annoyances.
C: The sound is far supirior to the average ear-bud. Sure if i spend 50$ on a pair of nice earbuds they SHOULD sound better... but we are talking about EARBUDS here... and the ipod's are very good for their price (pretty much free)
D: I do agree they were initially uncomfortable, and i won't wear them with a beanie (the pressure of the beanie on the ipod earbuds hurts the cartilage in my ear), but otherwise they never really bother me like other earbuds do.
All in all, i think the iPod's earbuds are well done for a product that is largely a "free" extra goodie. I'm sure apple ships their ipod's witht he cheapest high quality earbud they can produce, and they fully expect people to replace the earbud's with whatever they may already have at home if they prefer it (i've got more headphones and earbuds than i can count). For those who don't have any high-quality sets, or for whom the ipod's are actualy better (a lot of people i assure you).. they provide a pretty good set of earbuds, that while not worth a thousand dollars are certainly above the mark of mediocrity.
While i'm a huge fan of anime, listing Akira, Princess monoke and a host of others as my absolute favorites, anime in general is NOT the solution.
It's all about the stories, stupid.
Seriously, one has only to look at cartoon network to understand that the stylistic medium is hardly the prime determinate of quality. Ranging from Futurama, Family guy, Justice league and others to ATHF, PowerPuff Girls, Ed, Edd, & Eddie back towards your Trigun and BeBop and the insurmountably great Samarai Jack. You can quickly surmise that how the characters are drawn hardly relates to the quality of the show and/or movie.
Disney has truly grown decrepit in it's stories, loosing a huge portion of the charm and power it's former greats (Bambi, snow white, pinochio, Dumbo, cinderella, lady & the tramp, sword int he stone, sleeping beuty, 101 dalmations, etc...) to the current onslaught of crap.
Pizar's astounding sucess stems NOT from it's medium of choice but through it's incredible story telling captivation.
I Personaly am saddened that one of the great artistic styles truly pioneered by disney itself will slowly fade and possibly die simply because disney is incapable of hiring talented writers. I love anime, however there's a great degree to be said about all the various styles out there including what is literally the heart of being a "cartoon". While realism in films such as Akira are astounding and well appreciated, the fluidity and artistic impressionism of films such as fantasia, Beuty and the beast and even others (south park, simpsons, etc...) shouldn't be sacraficed.
Suffice to say, no matter what form of animation Disney uses it will all go to squat if they don't change how they produce their storyboards.
The biggest question here is how much do your users need to connect to each other, and if they need static IP's.
The most powerfull goal you have here is to segment your network.
You can do this strictly through the DHCP server by using several scopes.
Pass out the following IP's and give your main gateway multiple IP's, or have a machine act as proxy (with multiple gateway ip's for your lan's).
With enough segments, you can isolate problem PC's down to groups of ten or less depending on how you break up your private (or even public) ip's. This will make the majority of others users on your network unroutable to malicous virus's.
Just make sure your gateway (the one with all the.1 IP's for each segment) doesn't route traffic through itself to the other segments.
If you have a minimal budget, and your users dont need public IP's, you can buy a bunch of SOHO routers... for about 10-15$ a piece.... 300$ can get you 20 linksys's....
put 25 users on each linksys (with the WAN ports connected to your gateway).... and your users cant directly attack each other (except for the smaller networks behind the linksys's.
If your users have no need at all for direct access to each other... just set out your scope as 255.255.255.255.
now you r users can only reach the gateway and themselves.
As to email virus's, with DHCP you can force traffic to move through any machine you like, and set up a proxy between your "real" router and the network.... that proxy can filter port 25.... looking for viral email.
These solutions arent perfect, but they will greatly slow down propagation across your network, allowing you to respond much faster to problem children without having one bad computer infect everyone else.
--VISION
While i applaud the intentions of these donors, indeed the entire "save enterprise" foundation is an amazing initiative of fans attempting to keep a show they love alive.
However, Enterprise is horrible... Voyager was bad... but Enterprise is REALLY bad. I know im really drawing straws between determining which one is worse... but that really is non releveant to the point.
The show was and is very terribly made and is even contradictory to what the intentions of gene rodenberys universe were. It's lost it's multi-culturalism, the founding principle and indeed the trademark difference star trek brought from it's very first iteration throughout the rest of it's tenure. "Enterprise" is nearly an all-white western crew with the exception of a black driver and a vulcan.
This is NOT the vision of our future Gene painted, and it is NOT star trek.
I understand the fans love this show for some strange reason, or maybe they simply love the Star Trek universe and will bear the burden of this worst incarnation just to keep it going... but i believe their efforts... and money.... would much better spent on getting paramount to create a new quality star trek true to its roots.
Abandon the scot bacula, the country western intro, the nearly all-white and all-western crap of a show theyve created, and return to what star trek was supposed to be.
If you havent forgotten, Trek was supposed to be about a HOPE for humanities united front against "the final frontier". At last mankinds differences werent as great as the difficulties in facing a diverse and strange universe beyond our little backwater pond of a planet.
This money should be spent creating a show with better writers, a better cast and crew, and something far more canon than they have been. I would much rather see the rise of anything at least on the level of deep space nine, than any continuance of this voyager "enterprise" drivel.
3 million could at least hire better writers, and change the cast.
Lastly, these guys hit it on the head when they said that star trek's important role in our society is inspiration, there is no doubt it's had a cultural impact of untold magnitude by instilling the grandest dreams in our children of decades ago to even now with the belief that we could at least try to make this great society of our future. An earth united, and the stars at our footsteps... let us not let it be so easily trampled upon by cheap writers and bad marketers.
80$ a barrell vs 50$ a barell may SEEM to be a failure, but it is actualy an incredible accomplishment that will become increasingly viable in short order.
I've done some research on this topic and found out that californias agricultural waste which is mostly funneled down into a southern californian dessert lake area could supply enough fuel to satiate the US oil supply.
There is enough un-inhabitable land area in southern california to process all of this waste and thus fully liberate the US from foriegn oil, not to mention create a replenshible power supply compatible with our current prevelant technology (gas based power).
The greatest contorl over per barell pricing is from the supply made available from oil producing states greatly controlled by OPEC. As world consumption increases and known stock piles decrease and cease over the next 30 to 50 years the price per barrell will continualy rise. And will certainly exceed 80$ a barell probably within the next five to ten years.
The only reason oil is at 50$ per barell is due to it's massive scale, if waste based oils had even a hundreth of the scale that our current oil industry uses, or even a thousandth of the money, industry and investment it does, we would probably see prices drop well below the 50$ mark.
And this is speaking of the technology in it's current form. Though it may have some initial ineffeciences which have made the cost 80$ a barrell, cost saving measures through natural refinment of the processing of waste will undoubtably greatly improve the procedure within the next few years and continue.
I would say that 80$ a barrell is an astounding accomplishment which given the finite and defintie bounds of drill based oil will rapdily become an extremly attractive alternative fuel source.
Im surprised at the pesimisitc tone from slashdot. I also speculate that in the next ten years or so we shall see the major players seek control over this new market to sell oil to the world market as their drill based supply dwindles.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand your delima, but the point is that no vote is not a democracy. I respect your right not to vote, your right to choose no-one if you so feel, but what is so critical to our country and system is that you go and vote, even if that vote is for no-one at all, quite literally meaning going to the polling place, looking at whats on the board, and opting not to cats a vote for anyone at all. I know it sounds/seems like a watse of time, but it isnt, we need to work on getting everyone in our country who is eligible to vote to the polls, and to have all those who are agnostic or totally unsatisified with their options in the process. That way they may actually take an intrest in the canidates and the issues surrounding their locality. I am in strong support of a tax deduction for voting (something small like 100$ deduction with some sort of stub), to literally make it more compelling for our voters to participate. Many people oppose this because of the prospects of "paying people to vote" or even more often (when i speak with politicians and representatives directly) they claim that it shuold be a "privlege" to vote, and incentivising it is contrary to that. Those opinions may be somewhat correct, and i dont disagree with them on deeper levels, but in my mind the most important thing we can do as a society is to take the necesary (non-corruptive) steps to get as many voters to the polls as possible. So we dont have a country run by less than 30% of registered voters... which is less than 15% of our population. Think about it. A true democracy depends on everyone voting, even if the vote itself is blank. --VISION
The Goverment has too much infrastrucutre to just change their operating systems, and far too many potential compromises in the form of hundreds of thousands of employees (millions?). To ask them to make the sweeping and drastic changes to all their agencies wouldnt be a monumental task, it would be a near impossible one. Instead, just pull the plug. That is the internet one. Seriously, completely remove all the agencies from the Web, firewall them down to ZERO access to non-goverment networks. In each office place setup 4-5 computers (unconnected to the network) with internet access... if employees need access to the net at large... they can use those machines. I know its not a pleasant solution to the workers, but very few goverment positions actually require access to the net. It would go a long way to helping that 2 billion dollar loss in productivity mentioned not too long ago. While the offices are segmented, the Goverment IT guys can work on more effectivly deploying their machines in a manner that can restore access to each computer, but until then there's little reason 99% of these employees need direct access.
Holistic medicine is a voluntary and chosen practice, people who choose to practice it do so upon their own beliefs and choices, you can no more claim it to be murder than to say companies that sell butter or cars are killing people because they cause increased rates of heart attacks or car accidents.
Your contention that goverments inherently attempt to censor information contrary to their intrests holds weight and is exhibited consistently throughout history, one has only to look at wars to note how often... and important the practice has been used.
the real question is extent and content. No system can be completely "good" and/or "benevolent" as the very act of censorship restricts the rights of some for the benefit of others, however speech in concerns that render grave or immenent and real danger to a multi-tude of people are commonly restricted under what is generaly understood to be a common sense and practical public safety concern.
When the public safety aspect is over-extended beyond the real of "real" danger we begin to see the abuse... which is nearly inevitble, but the issue is the extent. China is without much question a hallmark of severly over extended censorship which goes ridiculously further beyond the bounds of reasonable public safety in comparison to the US.
To put the two on equivilent terms is spurious and intelectually insulting.
Hezbollah and other organizations like it, or closely affiliated with it... actively procure funds and engage in violent attacks without forwarning on civilian populations againts the wishes of their domestic populations. While they enjoy support of their respective publics as a symbolic resistence to the west, their methods are generally NOT supported and regularly denounced by those communities.
Falon Gong simple DOES NOT COMPARE.
The same way they block the TOR servers.
BULLSH*T Sweden may have a low population density given its full volume, but that is such a misleading statement i could almost slap you for being fesicous. http://www.ipasihcar.net/expacc/images/swpop270.gi f
you will find swedens distribution of population to be quite compressed into the more habitable regions, as in canada where 90% of the population lives within 50 miles of the US-Canda Border. You could claim canada has a low population density, which would be true... but only if you consider the massive nearly un-inhabited regions, same as with sweden.
The metrics of your local provider who youve neglected to mention are unknowable... i could offer 100/10 mb connections to everyone in my area if i wanted too provided my "city" is geogrphicly small enough, and my central pipe is big enough to handle spikes. Woop dee do.
Things become difficult when you have millions of customers spread across several counties.
This doesnt necesarily negate swedens better than average telecom, but dont misrepresent these things.
Is the ad potentially racist?
yes.
However racism depends on sevreal factors for recognition, to someone insulated or otherwise un-exposed to a diversity of cultures on a personal and frequent basis such an ad would be unlikely to convey any racist undertones to them.
Racism greatly depends upon historical perspective. Without a history of oppression or ill-will surrounding race semi-fresh in the minds of the viewers it would be very difficult for any given imagery or prose to evoke such a moniker.
However, in the ad we have a white woman all decked out in white mencing a black woman in black, attached with "white is comming" as a slogan. Intentional or not, satire or not, literal or not, product advertising or not... it carries obvious racial unertones.. even if its creators have no recist intentions, it is almost blatantly made in a manner delibratly based upon racial issues or at the minimum a HUGE leap of total ingnorance to the world we live in.
Of course the intentions are all the more obvious by the markets they have decided to place it in, as the non-US release clearly indicates they knew just how the US (with a much more diverse population, and more open race relations issues) would react.
Bottom line is, the ad puts a black person in a position of total infiriority to a white person, with a tag line that emphasizes that aspect.
Its inflamatory at best.
As a note of intrest there are the other two images, which "balence it out"...
* White woman over black woman.
* Black woman over white woman.
* White woman and black woman on equal footing
But of course this is pointless, the other two images have little to no relevancy in the worlds current climate of race relations. (of course if we had a succeeding couple hundred years of black oppression of the masses, and subsequent social revolution... the situation would likely be just as inflamatory in the opposite direction).
The real issue here, is such an advert reinforces negative stereotypes and relationships in our still healing society. While subtle it would serve to influence our children giving them (children of all races) cause to somehow believe just a "tiny" bit more in white supiriority, seeding racists, low self esteem, etc...
Until the rifts between under-represented and marginalized minorities and the power wielding majority (still overwhelmingly white - and largely male) are diminished, such forms of "advertising" will remain bad mojo.
A company of this size and portfolia could litaerally drag the entire economy to a standstill if allowed to patent everything. It's one thing to have a whole bunch of different companies pushing competing patents, but when several large (and supposedly competing?) firms get together and pool their patents into one collossus, then you can be certain noone else will be allowed to enter any market remotly connected. This is not a good thing.
Your daughter does indeed have a right to defend herself, as we all do. But telling her to take an action that is far more severe and dangerous than the bullying is a dubious reaction at best. I understand your desire to have her fight back and make her boundries known to her aggressor, but using THAT type is force is NOT justifiable.
The larger concern here is she could have killed the girl if that nose had broken wrong. And we must also remember that this is how the path to guns in school starts. The gangs started off with just fists, they moved on to sticks, then chains and knives, and eventually guns.
If we lived in a society with less control mechanisms (lack of police and school staff, etc...) then i could see a need for more drastic measures. But you run a real risk of hitting the wrong kid who, feeling that their "reputation" is on the line, may come after your child with a baseball bat after school one day.
I went to several schools, some extremely wealthy and "good", and others the opposite, and ill tell you in bopth schools i saw the same stuff. Some kid gets beat-up by someone he was bullying, and he and his friends get together after school and ambush him with weapons.
The best way to handle the problem is certainly to teach your child to stand up and fight back within the context of the situation (dont go for the throat if its someone you have to deal with every day... as in tommorrow, and the day after), but also to actively and aggresiovely pursue police, school, disciplinarian, and parental measures (talk to the other kids parents).
I also got picked on in school, i fought back and never backed down even to my own suffering sometimes... most of the kids left me alone because they just want an easy picking. But this one kid went to far (aimed a very real looking BB gun at me, some rocks thrown, etc...)... after fighting him (grabbing the gun like a kid who thinks hes about to get shot!!)... i went STRAIGHT to the cops. Didnt give a s*&^ what the other kids thought.
He of course called me a rat, etc... and when the other kids started to say the same, i told them straight up, you aim a gun at me i dont give a f$$# im going to the cops and F%$# you if you think im a rat for it.
They never brought it up again, and they never messed with me again.
Its all about respect and confidence. If you exude confidence, even if your choices arent liked, and your tactics shuned, kids will tend to leave you be. If they feel you arent certain in how your going to react, or if they think your weak in defending yourself (physically, legally, or verbally).. THEN they will look to exploit you.
Just be carefull of escalation. If they know youll bring the cops... theyll leave you alone (unless their totally our of their minds... in which case your screwed anyway)
that makes you.... an idiot. ;)
i think the money is humiliation enough for the nay-sayers.
This is an example of group selection, and it has selected many genes at once; some of them may have helped Europeans in their conquests, others may have just been along for the ride.
Are you of the Nazi philosophy? They also believed in the genteic supiriority of the aryan (european) race, and also thought such was a justification in the might is right sense.
Evolution is a much larger and longer process, requiring thousands upon thousands of generations and much more powerfull selection factors than just being more technologicly advanced at the time.
Much more importantly, your statements actually reflect a dirth of knowledge in history during and prior to the 17th-20th centuries. In the last 300 years or so, the europeans have been very succesfull, but i assure you, they didnt suddenly evolve a supirior genetic make-up in that time to cause so. One would have to argue that the european war making and technical advantages were from beter gene makeup, from there you would have to defend european advances against their basis... since a great portion of the european knowledge base they improved upon derived from asia and africa (gunpowder, paper, algerbra, the compass, etc...), at which point it becomes painfully obvious that genes have little to do with it.
Would you conisder islam and/or the moors to have been geneticly supirior as they took over much of southern europe and old rome for a time? Would you consider ghengis khan and the hordes he left behind equally geneticly supirior when they conquested more of the known world than has ever been done before? How about the japanese conquest of asia? the egyptians & nubians who ran for 10000 years or more? etc...
Most new genetic development is resultant of mating selection pressures and epidemic disease immunity's. We have had countless plagues sweep the world until the mid 20th century (anti-biotics, medicine, etc..) which aggresivly thinned out those ill-equipped to survive them. We have also semi-steadily reduced those who are geneticly pre-disposed to extreme anti-social behavior (not necesarily criminal behavior but "impaired" or "stunted" behavior), and we can expect as time marches forward for those who are less capable of intergrating with the essentials of modern society will be less likely to reproduce, etc...
However, the shifts in political / population drifts are not in any way related to some sort of genetic supiriority, and even more importantly, genetics is more of a massive numbers game than a conquest (distribution) model. In the long run the asians are currently "winning" with massive genetic presence in the human species, and europeans are next to last.
Dont confuse genetics with politics.... its a really bad idea... which has resulted in some really bad consequences.
consequences we are still paying for.
Im sure there's always that 19% whose intrests in computer science balenced with their ability to tele-commute are powerfull enough to overcome any obstacle. Even being harassed into wearing their hair like Leia.
--not that programmers are ALL like the above, but its a pretty tough image to beat, mainly because theres is a substantial segment of programmers who do unfortunately fit the bill.
That's called art imitating life. ;)
Evil.... yes
Genius.... no
Its a tough week for novell when they loose botha founder and 600 employees.... makes you wonder just who is using their solutions anymore?
I would pay for someone elses services if verizon wasnt a monopoly in my area, and their port 80 filtering is beyond aggravating.
will this finally force the providers to stop messing with the connections they sell for their own greedy gains?
Its just a matter of time before they start to force people to pay "premiums" for access to additional "services" via different ports if left unchecked.
Yes there are many work arounds, but they are all nasty kludges, and with supirior firewalls they will be able to filter based on application making the problem even harder to work around.
I hope this bill will start the process of forcing them to give us what we pay for without artifical limitations.
The issue of violence in video games is fairly devisive as the main portion of law makers are not amongst the demo-graphic of game players. Thus it's far easier to run an anti-video game campaign when your voter base and politcal makeup is on average over 25 years old.
Comicly, somehow everyone has missed the boat in regards to the fact the crime and violence in the US has been on a steady decline since the 70's. How can you argue these games and other mediums (gangster rap, death metal, movies, etc...) are causing increases in violence when the stats clearly show we are becoming less violent as a culture?
Maybe these mediums are serving as an outlet for violent behavior which would otherwise be exerted in the very real world with very real consequences.
Another point it seems many people willfully miss under the guise of free speech and/or desire for games with illicit content, is that there may well be a serious moral, ethical, and social problem associated with content that glorifies and/or encourages anti-social behavior.
This is quite a paradox, crime is on the wane, so its hard to say if these games are causing a problem or helping it. However as an adult who does play GTA and every FPS i could get my hands on, i can definitly say this isnt the type of stuff ill want my children playing. And while many would argue(and i do agree somewhat) that this falls into the realm of parental control and proper parenting, i say that our society has made such parenting increasingly difficult to do.
The average white collar family has TWO working parents who spend 50-60+ hours a week at work and commute another 10+ hours. Blue collar families face similar if not worse conditions leaving less and less time for adequate parental supervision. Maybe the solution is a reduced work week, but i dont think ANY of us believe that will happen in the near future (not to mention the effect on our economy), so in the interim i cant help but support better controls for parents.
Those controls are inadequete and nearly laughably easy to circumvent right now, as such the only moderation available without industry support is through strenuous law. Which puts us directly in the path of free speech.
How do i, as an adult gamer maintain my right to view whatever content i want, and leave the industry free to PRODUCE that content, without endangering the wellfare of my child in todays society? A society where even as a top-tier earner it is difficult for me to keep my child in a safe environment of my choosing.
This is a very serious problem which everyone seems to be avoiding by pointing at each other.
sadly enough it may be DRM is the only dependable solution. Now THATS a scray thought.
Maybe apple insisted on a click wheel with numbers in it (like touch button rotary... :) )
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000887049175/ mod up and share, cheers
Bandwidth and VOIP applications is obviously subject to a bottleneck limit if the threshhold is too low (less than 128kb up is gonna be tough)
However, 768kbp is WAY more than adequate to satiate the average small office, and is overkill for a family.
My office is 100% VOIP & asterisk.... we currently have 9 VOIP lines running fine (4 vonage, 5 broadvoice... phaing out vonage)
The key here that everyone seems to miss is that bandwidth costs are only aggragate during active phone calls.
If you've ever installed a PBX (traditional) you'll be remiss not to have backup POTS lines with that office Voice T1. When you plan how many "hard lines" you want available to the system in the event of an emergency, you normally account for the average simultaneous call vaolume during peak hours (an office of 20 people float around 6 simultaneous calls depending on the industry)
So while you may have a family of twelve, it's HIGHLY unlikely everyone will be wanting to use the phone at once..... you'd be lucky to have four phone calls at once.
This is when you start to add up your real-world "peak" bandwidth usage. While it may technicaly possible for all twelve people to pick up the phone at the same time, it's extremely unlikely.... the current "standard" codec g.711 Ulaw (US) is a 64kbps codec (per stream... 64k up, 64k down).... so 768kbps up should (theoreticaly) support 12 SIMULTANEOUS phone calls.
in the real world, network congestion, overhead, latency, other traffic (web pages, file uploads/downloads, streaming, etc...) should make a pragmatic sys admin cut the number in half to be safe..... thats 6 SIMULTANEOUS calls on a 768 connection.
Latency is a bigger issue than bandwidth for just about any home/office except the larger ones. And i assure you, if you have that many people who need to make calls.... get two seperete DSL's and call it a day (because it will still be cheaper).
Now if you want to account for use of alternative codecs (GSM & speex come to mind)... your talking progressively smaller bandwidth needs (8, 16 and 32!!!)
Currently, using asterisk, i have users with "softphones" in europe (were in the US), with a dozen SIP phones on site, and 9 total VOIP lines.... and were fine. this is all on a single 3mb/768kb verizon DSL (dont ask).
your biggest concerns are network lag (ISP flooding during peak times) and latency.... DSL is outstanding for VOIP as far as latency go's.
When high-res Video conferencing becomes common, then youll have major headaches.
The obsession some people place upon what they consider to be the "proper" form of a language is often the source of an undo amount of grief and ironicly... confusion.
The English language has evolved greatly within the span of only a couple hundred years, and the predominent force behind it has been "slang". If your wondering what i mean, pick up a book of shakespeare. It is near to impossible to understand ANYHTING written in the old english that preceeded that, and shakespeare along with his contemporaries is also a task to go through.
Should you decide to fast foward a bit into 18th century texts, and then along to early 19th century, you'll find the language less grueling, yet still alien enough to make the task more daunting than today's literature. This isn't because they were smarter or more verbose in those times... it's because the language has changed, and along with the times it's change is an evolution.
This same evolution took latin into italian, french, spanish, portugese, etc... And is a constant process.
While a lot of people are confronted with the conflict between their learned notions of "correct" english and the newer forms of the same meanings, many others simply do not notice... and some don't care.
The essence of language is effective communication, that is taking the course of action which you hope will convey your meaning in the most percise and direct format possible givin your audience and the necesary words to accomplish the goal. If your speaking in the southern section of the US you'll likely convey your thoughts in a southern twang shuold you have any inclination or desire to reach people more effectively. The same applies through-out all the different regions of the english speaking world. Australians, Brits, Canadians, etc...
Secondarily, Short hand speech, and the various amorphisms that have entered popular culture are not to be discounted as simply "mangling" the language. Prominent words such as FUCK and GOLF were once simple slang words (acronyms both) along with a host of other words which we take for granted today.
So while you may see "cya" as nothing short of a terrible abreviation of "see you", if it is used long enough and widely enough it will likely enter the language as a new word many decades from now.
Someone commented that shortening a 5 letter word into 3 isnt saving any time. I beg to differ. In shortening a whole sentance of words down to significantly less letters, expecialy in the context of commonly spoken terms, and doing so on a longer term IM conversation... Your reducing a great deal of physical effort as well as conveying the meaning you want to send effectively.
For exmaple while programming, i get hit with IM's that need confirmation. "alt-tab" -- "k" -- "alt tab".
in about a second i have switched from my script to the IM, aknowledged the other persons comment, and returned to my work.
Should i have siwthced over and said "Okay"?... or maybe "Yes, i understand and agree".... or maybe i should eshew ever saying "OK" at all since it is not really a "word". While im at it i should probably drop Snafu and laser, and all those other lovely acronyms we use from my words and just spell em out.
Im sure most people will acknowledge that there are some "slang" or formerly "slang" words that have such a obiquotus (sp) use they're most certainly acceptable as "real" words. However they didn't just appear over-night, they were at first only known by those who were in the "in" crowd, and then slowly became popular in their region, until over time they had become universal.
Hackers, script kiddies, etc... have a propensity for shortening anything and everything they can into the simplest measures. This stems from several main components.
A: Programming. You learn that less letters is a LOT less wor
A: The wire they make them out of is similar to flyfishing line, in that it doesn't tangle very easily, and when it does it's very easy to undo.
B: The tings are tough, i've got two pair that have survived continual beatings without succumbing to the bending shorts or various other annoyances.
C: The sound is far supirior to the average ear-bud. Sure if i spend 50$ on a pair of nice earbuds they SHOULD sound better... but we are talking about EARBUDS here... and the ipod's are very good for their price (pretty much free)
D: I do agree they were initially uncomfortable, and i won't wear them with a beanie (the pressure of the beanie on the ipod earbuds hurts the cartilage in my ear), but otherwise they never really bother me like other earbuds do.
All in all, i think the iPod's earbuds are well done for a product that is largely a "free" extra goodie. I'm sure apple ships their ipod's witht he cheapest high quality earbud they can produce, and they fully expect people to replace the earbud's with whatever they may already have at home if they prefer it (i've got more headphones and earbuds than i can count). For those who don't have any high-quality sets, or for whom the ipod's are actualy better (a lot of people i assure you).. they provide a pretty good set of earbuds, that while not worth a thousand dollars are certainly above the mark of mediocrity.
just my 2C
It's all about the stories, stupid.
Seriously, one has only to look at cartoon network to understand that the stylistic medium is hardly the prime determinate of quality. Ranging from Futurama, Family guy, Justice league and others to ATHF, PowerPuff Girls, Ed, Edd, & Eddie back towards your Trigun and BeBop and the insurmountably great Samarai Jack. You can quickly surmise that how the characters are drawn hardly relates to the quality of the show and/or movie.
Disney has truly grown decrepit in it's stories, loosing a huge portion of the charm and power it's former greats (Bambi, snow white, pinochio, Dumbo, cinderella, lady & the tramp, sword int he stone, sleeping beuty, 101 dalmations, etc...) to the current onslaught of crap.
Pizar's astounding sucess stems NOT from it's medium of choice but through it's incredible story telling captivation.
I Personaly am saddened that one of the great artistic styles truly pioneered by disney itself will slowly fade and possibly die simply because disney is incapable of hiring talented writers. I love anime, however there's a great degree to be said about all the various styles out there including what is literally the heart of being a "cartoon". While realism in films such as Akira are astounding and well appreciated, the fluidity and artistic impressionism of films such as fantasia, Beuty and the beast and even others (south park, simpsons, etc...) shouldn't be sacraficed.
Suffice to say, no matter what form of animation Disney uses it will all go to squat if they don't change how they produce their storyboards.
Can be tailored to almost any need, and is open source. Is very flexible.
Requirements:
- Just about any old or new PC with 2 NICs
- A plain vanilla router on one NIC to connect to your provider (linksys, netgear etc...)
- A Wi-fi AP or a regular hub on the the other NIC to connect clients
All said and done.... if youve got an old PC lying around your investment is a little time, and maybe 50$ or so bucks for the AP and/or the router.If you need to buy a PC, any old refurb or a cheapo PC can be had for under 300$.
With just a tiny bit of tinkering, you can modify it to make your Access point require a purchase (a coffee for 2 hours access?) --VISION, Enjoy
Customer: "help, im stuck in a sand dune"
OnStar: "ok, you seem to be off our GPS grid for some reason, can you tell me where you are?"
Customer: "mars"
OnStar: "......."
Customer: "hello?"
OnStar: "just, uh, keep spinning your tires..."
The most powerfull goal you have here is to segment your network.
You can do this strictly through the DHCP server by using several scopes.
Pass out the following IP's and give your main gateway multiple IP's, or have a machine act as proxy (with multiple gateway ip's for your lan's).
With enough segments, you can isolate problem PC's down to groups of ten or less depending on how you break up your private (or even public) ip's. This will make the majority of others users on your network unroutable to malicous virus's.
Just make sure your gateway (the one with all the .1 IP's for each segment) doesn't route traffic through itself to the other segments.
Gateway = 172.30.1.1, *.2.1, *.3.1, *.4.1, etc....
172.30.1.1 255.255.255.0
172.30.2.1 255.255.255.0
172.30.3.1 255.255.255.0
172.30.4.1 255.255.255.0
etc........
If you have a minimal budget, and your users dont need public IP's, you can buy a bunch of SOHO routers... for about 10-15$ a piece.... 300$ can get you 20 linksys's....
put 25 users on each linksys (with the WAN ports connected to your gateway).... and your users cant directly attack each other (except for the smaller networks behind the linksys's.
If your users have no need at all for direct access to each other... just set out your scope as 255.255.255.255.
192.168.1.1-255 / 255.255.255.255 gateway: 192.168.1.1
now you r users can only reach the gateway and themselves.
As to email virus's, with DHCP you can force traffic to move through any machine you like, and set up a proxy between your "real" router and the network.... that proxy can filter port 25.... looking for viral email.
These solutions arent perfect, but they will greatly slow down propagation across your network, allowing you to respond much faster to problem children without having one bad computer infect everyone else. --VISION
However, Enterprise is horrible... Voyager was bad... but Enterprise is REALLY bad. I know im really drawing straws between determining which one is worse... but that really is non releveant to the point.
The show was and is very terribly made and is even contradictory to what the intentions of gene rodenberys universe were. It's lost it's multi-culturalism, the founding principle and indeed the trademark difference star trek brought from it's very first iteration throughout the rest of it's tenure. "Enterprise" is nearly an all-white western crew with the exception of a black driver and a vulcan.
This is NOT the vision of our future Gene painted, and it is NOT star trek.
I understand the fans love this show for some strange reason, or maybe they simply love the Star Trek universe and will bear the burden of this worst incarnation just to keep it going... but i believe their efforts... and money.... would much better spent on getting paramount to create a new quality star trek true to its roots.
Abandon the scot bacula, the country western intro, the nearly all-white and all-western crap of a show theyve created, and return to what star trek was supposed to be.
If you havent forgotten, Trek was supposed to be about a HOPE for humanities united front against "the final frontier". At last mankinds differences werent as great as the difficulties in facing a diverse and strange universe beyond our little backwater pond of a planet.
This money should be spent creating a show with better writers, a better cast and crew, and something far more canon than they have been. I would much rather see the rise of anything at least on the level of deep space nine, than any continuance of this voyager "enterprise" drivel.
3 million could at least hire better writers, and change the cast.
Lastly, these guys hit it on the head when they said that star trek's important role in our society is inspiration, there is no doubt it's had a cultural impact of untold magnitude by instilling the grandest dreams in our children of decades ago to even now with the belief that we could at least try to make this great society of our future. An earth united, and the stars at our footsteps... let us not let it be so easily trampled upon by cheap writers and bad marketers.
--Vision
Just my 2c.
80$ a barrell vs 50$ a barell may SEEM to be a failure, but it is actualy an incredible accomplishment that will become increasingly viable in short order.
I've done some research on this topic and found out that californias agricultural waste which is mostly funneled down into a southern californian dessert lake area could supply enough fuel to satiate the US oil supply.
There is enough un-inhabitable land area in southern california to process all of this waste and thus fully liberate the US from foriegn oil, not to mention create a replenshible power supply compatible with our current prevelant technology (gas based power).
The greatest contorl over per barell pricing is from the supply made available from oil producing states greatly controlled by OPEC. As world consumption increases and known stock piles decrease and cease over the next 30 to 50 years the price per barrell will continualy rise. And will certainly exceed 80$ a barell probably within the next five to ten years.
The only reason oil is at 50$ per barell is due to it's massive scale, if waste based oils had even a hundreth of the scale that our current oil industry uses, or even a thousandth of the money, industry and investment it does, we would probably see prices drop well below the 50$ mark.
And this is speaking of the technology in it's current form. Though it may have some initial ineffeciences which have made the cost 80$ a barrell, cost saving measures through natural refinment of the processing of waste will undoubtably greatly improve the procedure within the next few years and continue.
I would say that 80$ a barrell is an astounding accomplishment which given the finite and defintie bounds of drill based oil will rapdily become an extremly attractive alternative fuel source.
Im surprised at the pesimisitc tone from slashdot. I also speculate that in the next ten years or so we shall see the major players seek control over this new market to sell oil to the world market as their drill based supply dwindles.
--VISION