I wonder if the "random" on an iPod is like the "random" on my Netgear MP101 wireless audio device connected to my stereo system.
If I select any playlist, and hit "PLAY" when the shuffle option is set to "Random" - then it plays the same order of songs every single time. To get a genuinely "more random" feel to the way it plays songs, I have to select the non-first song at the start of the playlist, then hit PLAY - and then hit "NEXT". After *that* it seems to be relatively random (Except for a pre-disposition to playing Eminem - or so it seems!).
I know it's tough to generate truly random numbers - but lets face it - for a music player - random doesn't need to be "truly random" - merely random enough to avoid getting posted at/. about not being random.:P
Future projections estimate an increase of ca. 100-800 mm in 100 years.
Funny! 100-800 mm - you think they're covering their bases? You think they just pulled those numbers out of a hat? Of course they did. Their stated margin of error is more than 800%!
I seem to recall my Chi-Squared test for statistical significance requires tolerances to be within 5% - so a claim of 100-105mm would be a testable and provable hypothesis. Stupid claims of 100-800 mm make me think the person making the claims is a complete BOOB.
I laugh at this. Look - if someone told you they could tell you the weather tomorrow you might believe them. If they said they can predict the weather for next week, you MIGHT believe them. However, if they said they were going to predict the weather 1 month from now, 1 year from now - and GOD FORBID: 100 years from now - you'd lock them in a psycho ward immediately.
So, 100-800mm is bloody stupid - no question about it - but you then add "ca." (Circa) to the already retarded estimate. So, "circa 100-800mm" in fact translates to "0-1000mm". And that's being conservative with the numbers. I'd actually go so far as to say that "circa 100-800mm" actually means "Anything from sea level DROPS of 20mm to sea level rises of up to 2 metres."
It'd be nice to know ho wmuch sea level rise to expect - and guesstimates with the quoted range are 100% useless. You don't know if you need to spend 2 trillion or 20 Trillion in the next 100 years to offset rising sealevels.
I think you'll agree, no one is going to make any planning decisions based on numbers like that.
FYI: Definite does not contain an "a" and neither do the other similar words: define, finite, definite, definitely. I have to apologise, but the spelling of "that word" is my pet hate. It is (I Think) the most commonly mis-spelled word in English - and I can't understand why. It is not pronounced with an "a".
We had a windmill at our farm for many years. It was a noisy thing, and only kept a bunch of 12V car batteries charged. Oh, it blew away 3 times too. No way would I expect a windmill to last 20 years. Moving parts suck.
I am very envious of the quoted power prices. Here in New Zealand, peak prices (all but 11pm to 6am) are over 18 cents per kilowatt hour, and around 11 c/kwh off peak. I simply can't believe that anyone can generate electricity and sell it economically at less than 2 cents! It must be heavily subsidised - surely??
Hell, all our electricity is Hydro-Electric, so we aren't even paying for coal or oil to fire the generators!
You are categorically wrong in your "parasites" description. Specifically:
"# A parasite is an organism that lives in or on the living tissue of a host organism at the expense of that host."
In no way can these companies be said to exist "at the expense of the host" (Microsoft).
In fact, your analogy is the exact OPPOSITE of what it should be: the relationship between McAffee and Symantec/Norton is SYMBIOTIC, specifically defined as:
"The intimate living together of two dissimilar organisms in a mutually beneficial relationship."
Indeed, the relationship benefits both MS *AND* the virus scanning companies.
I think maybe there are aspects of Conservative policy which elude you.
YES: Conservatives WANT to reduce spending, and reduce the size of government.
HOWEVER: They are not able to simply come into office and cut spending. The public won't stand for that - you'd never get re-elected. No, what you have to do to reduce government spending is to basically bankrupt the country.
The way you do this is by - oooooh - invading a couple of countries, spend - oooooh - maybe a couple of trillion dollars which need to be borrowed from other countries. THEN you cut taxes. (See there's a pattern forming here.) THEN you boost the budget for space, medical care, and make sure that the budget boosts and the tax cuts affect your buddies, so they can get Tera-Rich (Giga is so 20th century) without anyone REALLY caring too much. Oh, then you cut taxes again - or make the tax cuts permanent (invalidate the sunset clauses). If you think you need some "help" carrying your campaign of radical spending (cuts!) then you can always rely on the party faithful (who after all, have probably 20% more money in their pockets directly, and many millions more yet to come) to "deliver the election."
Then in a few years, when the country is so far in debt, the military has done all the investing it needs to for 20 years, business is tanking because of poor fiscal management, THEN the conservatives HAVE TO CUT SPENDING.
See - if you don't HAVE to cut spending - then you simply can't get away with it. BUT, if you completely insane, and drive the country into the deck, then you HAVE to. The result, is of course, a lot of misery - but Business will bounce back fast, with low taxes, and almost zero regulations. (Or in fact, a LOT of regulations, but from a government that can no longer afford to enforce or even police them.)
Because of cuts to spending, the government has to throw the consumer a bone - and so you reduce taxes...
THAT'S HOW CONSERVATIVES CUT SPENDING: BY GUTTING THE COUNTRY AND THE GOVERNMENT.
Disclaimer: I am not an American. Do not vote in US elections, and never will.
This is (hopefully!) where the US system actually STARTS to work. (Given that it is currently *not* working) The USA has a very good system of checks and balances - currently these are NOT being used and are not working correctly, but it is inevitable (I say) that they will start to work soon-ish.
While it IS true that US non-voters are the most apathetic bunch of losers possible, it will happen that they actually DO become concerned, but only when things get bad for them personally. Within a few (3-5) years from now, the average US worker will start to realise that they are working 10 hours a week more than they used to, but that their standard of living is not improving. This will be entirely due to crazy monetary policy, political mismanagement, Military stupidity, and excessive foreign borrowing.
THIS is when the corruption will be rooted out of the US system, and I predict many thousands of people will go to jail. Not hundreds, but MANY thousands. It might take years for those responsible to be foundout and imprisoned. (And, if the US court system isn't fixed in the meantime, most of the indicted will die of old age before they get a court date.)
Until things actually get worse for average voters (or actually, average non-voters, because they outnumber average voters IIRC) there will be no "political will" to root out the offenders. Sure, the losers of elections will protest loudly, but unless they are supported by a strong electorate, and strong evidence (combined! One by itself just isn't good enough) then the situation will continue as now: The worst democracy money can buy.
The absolute mystery to me, is how the normally sane people of America, have permitted a voting system which does not have a paper component to be implemented. I believe it is all to do with the "housing bubble" which has put so much money into US pcokets that you've all been far too busy buying Hummers, Plasma TVs, Satelite dishes and going out for dinner, to actually see what's been happening to your country.
Pretty soon though, the housing bubble is gonna burst, and that Hummer will cost $300 to fill the tank, and the Plasma TV will suffer burn-in and the Satelite dish will have 27 arab-speaking channels, and 99 Chinese speaking channels, (All you'll be left with in English) is FOX and 195 channels of Sports) and the restaurants will be closed, or feeding you heart-attack food.
THEN and ONLY THEN - will the shit start to hit the fan.
I'm glad he did not do anything so stupid as to say "impossible".
The topic of "cloning from ancestral DNA" may be very difficult, and not possible with today's technology, or today's samples, but I think it is safe to say that people who label things "impossible" with no view to the future, are fools, and are proven wrong in time.
This is the key point - surely? If it were rotten, then it would smell bloody awful (pun intended), and there'd by no chance of any DNA surviving. But what if it DID NOT smell awful? Surely that's an immediate indication of preservation?
And if it did NOT smell, you'd only have a TINY window of opportunity to perform tests on it - before oxygen started to do its oxidising thing.
Personally, I'd start placing bets with reputable gambling houses in the U.K. that a dinosaur will re re-constituted from ancestral DNA before 2050.
I'm reminded of the line by Dr. Malcolm;
"Oh, yeah. Oooh, ahhh, that's how it always starts. Then later there's running and screaming." See Signature.:)
Broken, insecure, untrustworthy and easy-to-alter voting machines are neither here nor there! The issue at hand is the corrupt officials permitted to control the elections.
Even PERFECT voting machines do not automatically make for a fair and accurate election result.
If the country actually spent some time removing partisan control of any part of the electoral system, then the elections would just about take care of themselves.
...Neocons who are willing and able to give away all of our Constitutional rights and freedoms.
You got one word wrong: change "give" to "take" and the sentence is correct.
You haven't seen the obvious: the government needs you to fear terrorism. Forget the fact you're more likely to be killed by bees, and 10,000 times more likely to be killed in a car...
The Bush regime (I won't dignify it with the word "administration", and I equate it with the regime of a despotic and nepotistic dictator, only limited to 8 years - but we'll see about that "8 year" thing too.) requires and demands that you are afraid, and WELL afraid. The only way to make sure you are afraid is to continue scaring you with bullshit, and making new laws which make it sound like they might work.
In fact, the new laws, and the breaking of existing laws, as well as the reduction of freedoms, and rights (particularly to privacy) are designed to do only one thing: keep you scared. THEN - the other laws which have nothing to do with terrorism - like the copyright laws, and every other "nanny state" law passed are all designed to criminalise you. I doubt there's a single US-based reader of slashdot who isn;t guilty of breaking some law in the US, and mostly likely a federal law at that.
So, a scared population, who are all law-breakers can be detained at will, and easily controlled. It's the old story: you're a frog, and the water in the pot is getting hotter and hotter, and you feel a bit uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough to jump out of the pot.
You see, the News networks just will not stand for that. A delay of a day until final results are known?? Surely you jest? The networks couldn't seel enough election advertising to cover the cost of the delay - plus - there wouldn't be any way to keep people glued to their idiot boxes, watching the faked results come in!
No - your idea just won't fly sorry: America has spoken, and she prefers very quick results which are fake, than slower results which are correct.
Thanks for the info. I was not aware that you were so far along the conversion path. Yes - I recall seeing signs in both miles and klicks in Vermont in 1982 and thinking that it'd fail. It's not so much (as you believe) that people "do not like metric", it's that they are too lazy to change. (New Zealandesr certainly were - but we simply took down the old signs!)
There's certainly nothing inherently difficult in metric-land - in fact, life is much easier! For sure, who the hell knows how many bushels per furlong, or how many hogsheads per chain your car consumes of petrol (gas), but equally, who the hell knows what "litres per hundred kilometres" means? Jebus, I still calculate gas economy in klicks per litre - because I am STILL used to "miles per gallon" even 30 years after NZ made the switch. So, I am "lazy" too.
I am sure too, that a part of Americans rejecting the metrix system is also to do with the facts that the cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys in France started it all off, and that Americans are fiercely independent. It's almost like "Oh well, the rest of the world changed - and that's all the reason we need NOT TO CHANGE!"
One thing IS clear though, the metric system WILL displace the Imperial system in time, and we will have children (or maybe grand children in your case) who do not understand "If you give them 2.54cm they'll take 1.61 kilometres", or what the word "Mileage" means. There are some great turns of phrase which simply do not translate to metric, and never will - but we will all be better off when the word "inch" only relates to a type of worm, and "mile" is only a typo of "smile".
I believe you have that ass-backwards - which is common in America.
No, the highway distances, daily temperatures and mountain heights are MOST likely to be changed to Metric in the USA, and it is the engineering/design/construction industries which are LEAST likely to change.
Look at it this way: changing signs on the side of the road, re-printing maps and changing thermometers (actually, in most cases they'll already have C on one side) is very cheap and easy. What is difficult and mind numbingly expensive is to REPLACE all the engineering, test and measuring, production and design tools with their metric equivalents.
The cost to US industry, of switching from Imperial to Metric would be counted in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
For a country like New Zealand, which had very little actual "industry" in the first place (Unless you count "sheep" as "industry") and bugger all people, it was very easy and cheap to switch over, and we did it, because all our trading partners did it.
The USA, on the other hand, doesn't have "trading partners" so much as "creditors";) , and those creditors wouldn't be too happy to see them waste a few hundred billion changing from inches to millimetres.
You intentionally (it seems) misinterpret the information provided. There are very few people who actively disagree with the concept of global warming. No, the disagreements are threefold:
1) The rate at which the warming is occuring. 2) What proportion of it is due to human activity. 3) Whether spending several trillion dollars trying to prevent it is a worthwhile activity.
My personal belief is that YES, global warming is a reality. But I also believe that it is more to do with the Sun, than with our burning fossil fuel. I also believe the consequences are/will be less severe than predicted. Also, I do not believe that science is yet at the stage where a prediction about efforts to stop global warming are anywhere near accurate.
ALL (without exception) predictions in the past have been 100% wrong: over population, over pollution, lack of food and even Global Cooling (!! Remember all the predictions in the 70s and 80s that we were heading into an ice age??) -- all have proven to be completely false.
Now, you want us to accept that THIS time the scientists are right, and that we should expend a significant proportion of the world's income on reducing emmissions - when we have no idea if it will do what we hope it will?
Sorry, that's no way to spend a few tens of trillions dollars.
Far better to invest that money in protecting humanity from global warming, and to continue to develop strategies and techniques to live on a changeable and changeing world - just as we have always done.
Frankly, today's estimates of terraforming Mars will be about as accurate as a 18th century peasant's estimate of how long it'd take to dig a tunnel from England to France, under the sea. He'd say "impossible" or "at least 1000 years". We know the real answer to be somewhat shorter.
Simply put: more than 20 years from now, all bets are off - anything you care to speculate about is certain to be wrong.
I would think that with enough Terawatts from He3 Fusion, we will terraform Mars in under 200 years. And the first 50 will probably be taken up with bombarding it with asteroids from orbit, to increase the surface temperature.
It doesn't really matter whether we go there as bio-organic humans, or as electro-inorganic ones, as we'll still like the idea of sitting next to a lake, with a gentle warming breeze making waves in grass, and sharing it all with a pretty girl.
Certainly I'm looking forward to that on Mars, sometime in the 24 hundreds.
Much later I may come back to watch the sun consume the Earth as it expands in its death throes.
Sadly, subsurface nuclear detonations won't do bugger all for you. I seem to recall 7th Form Physics saying that a decent sized Nuke, if detonated inside a block of ice, will only melt a sphere about 15 metres (or so) in diameter, such is the specific heat capacity of water.
Of course, if it's not buried deepish, it'll also make a fairly decent crater, and irradiate the sirface for miles.
But the principle remains the same: you aren't doing yourself any favours by trying to melt ice, or frozen gasses with Nukes.
No, far better (but less easy!) to use Nukes to create craters on NMOs (Near Mars Objects), or Asteroids (preferabl;y water bearing ones) and then use those craters as rough rocket nozzles to direct nuclear blasts such that you can bombard Mars with thousands of asteroids for a few hundred years. That'll raise the surface temperature, provide much needed gases, and if you timed them right, and had them strike at the right angle, you'd be able to decrease the periodicity of Mars, and reduce the day down to 24 hours. That extra time past midnight will be a real stinker.:)
Actually, with bondage videos in Britain, you'd probably have no trouble joining the "Bondage on Wednesday" group in your neighbourhood.
No - the USA is the only place that makes it almost impossible to NOT be a criminal. This is, after all, the purpose of the US Government: to enact so many stupid laws that EVERYONE is a criminal. Then the authorities can always arrest you for SOMETHING, and hence they have immense power over the *cough* voters *cough*.
Don't you see - without the power to arrest anyone at will, the government can't control you. Plus, you wouldn't actually be AFRAID - which is the reason you have a government OF the lawyers, BY the lawyers, and FOR the lawyers. FEAR.
It's the catch-phrase of the USA: FEAR.
Fear of terror Fear of being poor Fear of being arrested Fear of losing your job Fear of losing your car Fear of being attacked Fear of being left behind Fear of being left out Fear for your life Fear for your teenager Fear for any fucking thing you can think of.
God forbid a citizen should try to do something about it, because they're undoubtedly a file sharer, or a speeder, or a tax-cheat...
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if the "random" on an iPod is like the "random" on my Netgear MP101 wireless audio device connected to my stereo system.
/. about not being random. :P
If I select any playlist, and hit "PLAY" when the shuffle option is set to "Random" - then it plays the same order of songs every single time. To get a genuinely "more random" feel to the way it plays songs, I have to select the non-first song at the start of the playlist, then hit PLAY - and then hit "NEXT". After *that* it seems to be relatively random (Except for a pre-disposition to playing Eminem - or so it seems!).
I know it's tough to generate truly random numbers - but lets face it - for a music player - random doesn't need to be "truly random" - merely random enough to avoid getting posted at
YAYS! We all know it's just plain old LEGO!
;)
OK, so it's new-fangled, laser-totin', programmable, walkin'-tall LEGO - BUT IT'S STILL JUST LEGO!
Funny! 100-800 mm - you think they're covering their bases? You think they just pulled those numbers out of a hat? Of course they did. Their stated margin of error is more than 800%!
I seem to recall my Chi-Squared test for statistical significance requires tolerances to be within 5% - so a claim of 100-105mm would be a testable and provable hypothesis. Stupid claims of 100-800 mm make me think the person making the claims is a complete BOOB.
I laugh at this. Look - if someone told you they could tell you the weather tomorrow you might believe them. If they said they can predict the weather for next week, you MIGHT believe them. However, if they said they were going to predict the weather 1 month from now, 1 year from now - and GOD FORBID: 100 years from now - you'd lock them in a psycho ward immediately.
So, 100-800mm is bloody stupid - no question about it - but you then add "ca." (Circa) to the already retarded estimate. So, "circa 100-800mm" in fact translates to "0-1000mm". And that's being conservative with the numbers. I'd actually go so far as to say that "circa 100-800mm" actually means "Anything from sea level DROPS of 20mm to sea level rises of up to 2 metres."
It'd be nice to know ho wmuch sea level rise to expect - and guesstimates with the quoted range are 100% useless. You don't know if you need to spend 2 trillion or 20 Trillion in the next 100 years to offset rising sealevels.
I think you'll agree, no one is going to make any planning decisions based on numbers like that.
FYI: Definite does not contain an "a" and neither do the other similar words: define, finite, definite, definitely. I have to apologise, but the spelling of "that word" is my pet hate. It is (I Think) the most commonly mis-spelled word in English - and I can't understand why. It is not pronounced with an "a".
We had a windmill at our farm for many years. It was a noisy thing, and only kept a bunch of 12V car batteries charged. Oh, it blew away 3 times too. No way would I expect a windmill to last 20 years. Moving parts suck.
I am very envious of the quoted power prices. Here in New Zealand, peak prices (all but 11pm to 6am) are over 18 cents per kilowatt hour, and around 11 c/kwh off peak. I simply can't believe that anyone can generate electricity and sell it economically at less than 2 cents! It must be heavily subsidised - surely??
Hell, all our electricity is Hydro-Electric, so we aren't even paying for coal or oil to fire the generators!
You are categorically wrong in your "parasites" description. Specifically:
"# A parasite is an organism that lives in or on the living tissue of a host organism at the expense of that host."
In no way can these companies be said to exist "at the expense of the host" (Microsoft).
In fact, your analogy is the exact OPPOSITE of what it should be: the relationship between McAffee and Symantec/Norton is SYMBIOTIC, specifically defined as:
"The intimate living together of two dissimilar organisms in a mutually beneficial relationship."
Indeed, the relationship benefits both MS *AND* the virus scanning companies.
I think maybe there are aspects of Conservative policy which elude you.
YES: Conservatives WANT to reduce spending, and reduce the size of government.
HOWEVER: They are not able to simply come into office and cut spending. The public won't stand for that - you'd never get re-elected. No, what you have to do to reduce government spending is to basically bankrupt the country.
The way you do this is by - oooooh - invading a couple of countries, spend - oooooh - maybe a couple of trillion dollars which need to be borrowed from other countries. THEN you cut taxes. (See there's a pattern forming here.) THEN you boost the budget for space, medical care, and make sure that the budget boosts and the tax cuts affect your buddies, so they can get Tera-Rich (Giga is so 20th century) without anyone REALLY caring too much. Oh, then you cut taxes again - or make the tax cuts permanent (invalidate the sunset clauses). If you think you need some "help" carrying your campaign of radical spending (cuts!) then you can always rely on the party faithful (who after all, have probably 20% more money in their pockets directly, and many millions more yet to come) to "deliver the election."
Then in a few years, when the country is so far in debt, the military has done all the investing it needs to for 20 years, business is tanking because of poor fiscal management, THEN the conservatives HAVE TO CUT SPENDING.
See - if you don't HAVE to cut spending - then you simply can't get away with it. BUT, if you completely insane, and drive the country into the deck, then you HAVE to. The result, is of course, a lot of misery - but Business will bounce back fast, with low taxes, and almost zero regulations. (Or in fact, a LOT of regulations, but from a government that can no longer afford to enforce or even police them.)
Because of cuts to spending, the government has to throw the consumer a bone - and so you reduce taxes...
THAT'S HOW CONSERVATIVES CUT SPENDING: BY GUTTING THE COUNTRY AND THE GOVERNMENT.
Disclaimer: I am not an American. Do not vote in US elections, and never will.
This is (hopefully!) where the US system actually STARTS to work. (Given that it is currently *not* working) The USA has a very good system of checks and balances - currently these are NOT being used and are not working correctly, but it is inevitable (I say) that they will start to work soon-ish.
While it IS true that US non-voters are the most apathetic bunch of losers possible, it will happen that they actually DO become concerned, but only when things get bad for them personally. Within a few (3-5) years from now, the average US worker will start to realise that they are working 10 hours a week more than they used to, but that their standard of living is not improving. This will be entirely due to crazy monetary policy, political mismanagement, Military stupidity, and excessive foreign borrowing.
THIS is when the corruption will be rooted out of the US system, and I predict many thousands of people will go to jail. Not hundreds, but MANY thousands. It might take years for those responsible to be foundout and imprisoned. (And, if the US court system isn't fixed in the meantime, most of the indicted will die of old age before they get a court date.)
Until things actually get worse for average voters (or actually, average non-voters, because they outnumber average voters IIRC) there will be no "political will" to root out the offenders. Sure, the losers of elections will protest loudly, but unless they are supported by a strong electorate, and strong evidence (combined! One by itself just isn't good enough) then the situation will continue as now: The worst democracy money can buy.
The absolute mystery to me, is how the normally sane people of America, have permitted a voting system which does not have a paper component to be implemented. I believe it is all to do with the "housing bubble" which has put so much money into US pcokets that you've all been far too busy buying Hummers, Plasma TVs, Satelite dishes and going out for dinner, to actually see what's been happening to your country.
Pretty soon though, the housing bubble is gonna burst, and that Hummer will cost $300 to fill the tank, and the Plasma TV will suffer burn-in and the Satelite dish will have 27 arab-speaking channels, and 99 Chinese speaking channels, (All you'll be left with in English) is FOX and 195 channels of Sports) and the restaurants will be closed, or feeding you heart-attack food.
THEN and ONLY THEN - will the shit start to hit the fan.
I'm glad he did not do anything so stupid as to say "impossible".
The topic of "cloning from ancestral DNA" may be very difficult, and not possible with today's technology, or today's samples, but I think it is safe to say that people who label things "impossible" with no view to the future, are fools, and are proven wrong in time.
The article doesn't say HOW IT SMELLED!
:)
This is the key point - surely? If it were rotten, then it would smell bloody awful (pun intended), and there'd by no chance of any DNA surviving. But what if it DID NOT smell awful? Surely that's an immediate indication of preservation?
And if it did NOT smell, you'd only have a TINY window of opportunity to perform tests on it - before oxygen started to do its oxidising thing.
Personally, I'd start placing bets with reputable gambling houses in the U.K. that a dinosaur will re re-constituted from ancestral DNA before 2050.
I'm reminded of the line by Dr. Malcolm;
"Oh, yeah. Oooh, ahhh, that's how it always starts. Then later there's running and screaming." See Signature.
http://4sure.co.nz/downloads/MPAA-P2P-advert-small .jpg
:)
Enjoy
I got news for you man - those elements are NOT secret. :P
AAAAH - but the toilet is ALWAYS broken in space.
Broken, insecure, untrustworthy and easy-to-alter voting machines are neither here nor there! The issue at hand is the corrupt officials permitted to control the elections.
Even PERFECT voting machines do not automatically make for a fair and accurate election result.
If the country actually spent some time removing partisan control of any part of the electoral system, then the elections would just about take care of themselves.
You got one word wrong: change "give" to "take" and the sentence is correct.
You haven't seen the obvious: the government needs you to fear terrorism. Forget the fact you're more likely to be killed by bees, and 10,000 times more likely to be killed in a car...
The Bush regime (I won't dignify it with the word "administration", and I equate it with the regime of a despotic and nepotistic dictator, only limited to 8 years - but we'll see about that "8 year" thing too.) requires and demands that you are afraid, and WELL afraid. The only way to make sure you are afraid is to continue scaring you with bullshit, and making new laws which make it sound like they might work.
In fact, the new laws, and the breaking of existing laws, as well as the reduction of freedoms, and rights (particularly to privacy) are designed to do only one thing: keep you scared. THEN - the other laws which have nothing to do with terrorism - like the copyright laws, and every other "nanny state" law passed are all designed to criminalise you. I doubt there's a single US-based reader of slashdot who isn;t guilty of breaking some law in the US, and mostly likely a federal law at that.
So, a scared population, who are all law-breakers can be detained at will, and easily controlled. It's the old story: you're a frog, and the water in the pot is getting hotter and hotter, and you feel a bit uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough to jump out of the pot.
You got it wrong. KISS = "Keep It Stupid, Simple!"
Then it'll actually work.
Sorry no.
You see, the News networks just will not stand for that. A delay of a day until final results are known?? Surely you jest? The networks couldn't seel enough election advertising to cover the cost of the delay - plus - there wouldn't be any way to keep people glued to their idiot boxes, watching the faked results come in!
No - your idea just won't fly sorry: America has spoken, and she prefers very quick results which are fake, than slower results which are correct.
"The finest democracy money can buy."
No - wait.
Um.
Something about the world's leading democracy?
No - No - wait, I've got it.
I want UN observers posted in Maryland - only then can we be even remotely confident in that third world country's vote.
Thanks for the info. I was not aware that you were so far along the conversion path. Yes - I recall seeing signs in both miles and klicks in Vermont in 1982 and thinking that it'd fail. It's not so much (as you believe) that people "do not like metric", it's that they are too lazy to change. (New Zealandesr certainly were - but we simply took down the old signs!)
;)
There's certainly nothing inherently difficult in metric-land - in fact, life is much easier! For sure, who the hell knows how many bushels per furlong, or how many hogsheads per chain your car consumes of petrol (gas), but equally, who the hell knows what "litres per hundred kilometres" means? Jebus, I still calculate gas economy in klicks per litre - because I am STILL used to "miles per gallon" even 30 years after NZ made the switch. So, I am "lazy" too.
I am sure too, that a part of Americans rejecting the metrix system is also to do with the facts that the cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys in France started it all off, and that Americans are fiercely independent. It's almost like "Oh well, the rest of the world changed - and that's all the reason we need NOT TO CHANGE!"
One thing IS clear though, the metric system WILL displace the Imperial system in time, and we will have children (or maybe grand children in your case) who do not understand "If you give them 2.54cm they'll take 1.61 kilometres", or what the word "Mileage" means. There are some great turns of phrase which simply do not translate to metric, and never will - but we will all be better off when the word "inch" only relates to a type of worm, and "mile" is only a typo of "smile".
Or, am I off the mark by an urban kilometre?
I believe you have that ass-backwards - which is common in America.
;) , and those creditors wouldn't be too happy to see them waste a few hundred billion changing from inches to millimetres.
No, the highway distances, daily temperatures and mountain heights are MOST likely to be changed to Metric in the USA, and it is the engineering/design/construction industries which are LEAST likely to change.
Look at it this way: changing signs on the side of the road, re-printing maps and changing thermometers (actually, in most cases they'll already have C on one side) is very cheap and easy. What is difficult and mind numbingly expensive is to REPLACE all the engineering, test and measuring, production and design tools with their metric equivalents.
The cost to US industry, of switching from Imperial to Metric would be counted in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
For a country like New Zealand, which had very little actual "industry" in the first place (Unless you count "sheep" as "industry") and bugger all people, it was very easy and cheap to switch over, and we did it, because all our trading partners did it.
The USA, on the other hand, doesn't have "trading partners" so much as "creditors"
To The Best Of My Knowledge... ... Australia hasn't been downgraded from "Continent" to "Island" just yet.
:P
But I understand the Whitehouse is working on it.
You intentionally (it seems) misinterpret the information provided. There are very few people who actively disagree with the concept of global warming. No, the disagreements are threefold:
1) The rate at which the warming is occuring.
2) What proportion of it is due to human activity.
3) Whether spending several trillion dollars trying to prevent it is a worthwhile activity.
My personal belief is that YES, global warming is a reality. But I also believe that it is more to do with the Sun, than with our burning fossil fuel. I also believe the consequences are/will be less severe than predicted. Also, I do not believe that science is yet at the stage where a prediction about efforts to stop global warming are anywhere near accurate.
ALL (without exception) predictions in the past have been 100% wrong: over population, over pollution, lack of food and even Global Cooling (!! Remember all the predictions in the 70s and 80s that we were heading into an ice age??) -- all have proven to be completely false.
Now, you want us to accept that THIS time the scientists are right, and that we should expend a significant proportion of the world's income on reducing emmissions - when we have no idea if it will do what we hope it will?
Sorry, that's no way to spend a few tens of trillions dollars.
Far better to invest that money in protecting humanity from global warming, and to continue to develop strategies and techniques to live on a changeable and changeing world - just as we have always done.
I'd dispute both those assertions.
Frankly, today's estimates of terraforming Mars will be about as accurate as a 18th century peasant's estimate of how long it'd take to dig a tunnel from England to France, under the sea. He'd say "impossible" or "at least 1000 years". We know the real answer to be somewhat shorter.
Simply put: more than 20 years from now, all bets are off - anything you care to speculate about is certain to be wrong.
I would think that with enough Terawatts from He3 Fusion, we will terraform Mars in under 200 years. And the first 50 will probably be taken up with bombarding it with asteroids from orbit, to increase the surface temperature.
It doesn't really matter whether we go there as bio-organic humans, or as electro-inorganic ones, as we'll still like the idea of sitting next to a lake, with a gentle warming breeze making waves in grass, and sharing it all with a pretty girl.
Certainly I'm looking forward to that on Mars, sometime in the 24 hundreds.
Much later I may come back to watch the sun consume the Earth as it expands in its death throes.
Sadly, subsurface nuclear detonations won't do bugger all for you. I seem to recall 7th Form Physics saying that a decent sized Nuke, if detonated inside a block of ice, will only melt a sphere about 15 metres (or so) in diameter, such is the specific heat capacity of water.
:)
Of course, if it's not buried deepish, it'll also make a fairly decent crater, and irradiate the sirface for miles.
But the principle remains the same: you aren't doing yourself any favours by trying to melt ice, or frozen gasses with Nukes.
No, far better (but less easy!) to use Nukes to create craters on NMOs (Near Mars Objects), or Asteroids (preferabl;y water bearing ones) and then use those craters as rough rocket nozzles to direct nuclear blasts such that you can bombard Mars with thousands of asteroids for a few hundred years. That'll raise the surface temperature, provide much needed gases, and if you timed them right, and had them strike at the right angle, you'd be able to decrease the periodicity of Mars, and reduce the day down to 24 hours. That extra time past midnight will be a real stinker.
From a happy sort-of democracy, to the worst government money can buy: America you've come a long way since 1776.
Actually, with bondage videos in Britain, you'd probably have no trouble joining the "Bondage on Wednesday" group in your neighbourhood.
No - the USA is the only place that makes it almost impossible to NOT be a criminal. This is, after all, the purpose of the US Government: to enact so many stupid laws that EVERYONE is a criminal. Then the authorities can always arrest you for SOMETHING, and hence they have immense power over the *cough* voters *cough*.
Don't you see - without the power to arrest anyone at will, the government can't control you. Plus, you wouldn't actually be AFRAID - which is the reason you have a government OF the lawyers, BY the lawyers, and FOR the lawyers. FEAR.
It's the catch-phrase of the USA: FEAR.
Fear of terror
Fear of being poor
Fear of being arrested
Fear of losing your job
Fear of losing your car
Fear of being attacked
Fear of being left behind
Fear of being left out
Fear for your life
Fear for your teenager
Fear for any fucking thing you can think of.
God forbid a citizen should try to do something about it, because they're undoubtedly a file sharer, or a speeder, or a tax-cheat...