It costs $2,500 to unlock this new software feature.
That is not (entirely) accurate. The autopilot feature is currently on the price list as a $2500 option. I'm under the impression that all current cars _may_ have the right sensors (they are generally helpful in getting good collision avoidance ratings--I'm not sure but I assume if you have the hardware and you did _not_ pay for autopilot when it was available as an option, then you may be able to pay now to enable the feature).
However, my car, built in late September, 2014, was not priced under the current pricing model--there was no autopilot option at that time, yet my car (like most cars built in late September, 2014) has all the sensors and autopilot is fully enabled on my vehicle as of the software update I installed this morning. I did pay for other options that are no longer available (as I recall, parking sensors and fog lights), but I did not have to pay $2500 to enable autopilot.
-se
it's simple to see that either six months is as much as was legally required (in which case they followed the law) or it is not (in which case they broke the law).
Dodd-Frank and HIPAA both specify at least 5 years (I think HIPAA is 6). Of course, there is no reason to believe that the government would hold itself to anything remotely like the standards that they not only expect, but demand (under penalty of imprisonment) from everyone else.
_ALL_ innovation "costs" jobs. That is pretty much what innovation means--getting either more or better for less. As a society, we get more produced value for less cost (often as less labor)--freeing resources (i.e. labor) to make products that previously never existed.
This is because the care offered by the NHS is already to a high standard. Private providers need to compete in order to make people feel that additional insurance has value.
Luckily, since the infinite wisdom of our congress has instituted a new tax on tanning salons, the incidence of melanoma among US caucasian girls will now go back down a bit. Coincidentally, tanning beds were introduced in the US about 1980, and can triple the risk of melanoma (http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/05/27/tanning.booth.melanoma/).
The biggest problem with just dropping RSTs is that you can't stop the RSTs going to the other end of the connection--your torrent client may still think the session is open, but your peer will think that it is closed.
RST is typically only used for abnormal termination, FIN (and the corresponding FIN/ACK) are used for 'normal' session closing. There is some additional risk to dropping RSTs in that over time all sessions that were supposed to be terminated 'abnormally' will linger, possibly forever, but if you only did RST dropping on the port you used for bittorrent, you could easily monitor them (and perhaps kill them manually, if necessary, if/when you stop your bittorrent client.
You make some very good points, but I have a few comments:
The uptake of true 1080p on screen sizes of 32" or less has been slow because there's virtually no visual difference between 720p/WXGA screens at those screen sizes for the average viewing distance in a living room. The uptake of true 1080p on screen sizes less than 32" is slow because there's virtually no sets with that resolution. I recently bought both a 40" 1080p LCD set (those are widely available) and a 32" 1080p LCD set (does anyone other than Sharp even make these??). Can I say for sure I could tell the difference between 720p and 1080p at >8 feet?--perhaps not, but I was willing to pay $200 more just in case. Below 32", as far as I can tell, that choice is not available to me.
But there's one problem with 63" and larger screens: they are close to the limit for what most homes can pass through their door!. In fact, a monolithic 71" 1080p plasma that a large Korean company allowed us to borrow for our lab work wouldn't go properly around normal corners and with standard door widths. Did you try turning the TV on its side? Just off the top of my head, a Sharp 65" LCD panel weighs ~110lbs, is ~61" long, ~36" high, and ~4" deep. Turned on its side, even a 75" panel with side mounted speakers should fit through a standard door, and would be less than 4 feet 'long'. True, above that size (and in tight spaces, even at that size or slightly smaller) you'd have trouble--even more so if you didn't take the set out of the box first.
I think all the other points you made were spot on (at least as far as I know, which isn't very far), but we should never underestimate some marketing guy's ability to convince the general public they need something 'better'--and bigger numbers make for the easiest sales pitch.
Since at birth, children's fingers are so small, I don't believe they are generally recorded. However, I think most (many?, some?, all?) US states record footprints--I suppose since feet change less in size it is easier to match them up for the purposes of identification, at least through early childhood. Blood tests are likely required too--I don't recall if there was some indication that blood wouldn't be kept for DNA purposes (I only have 2 children, so I've only been through this twice, and believe me, parents are not paying a lot of attention to what seem to be minor details during their arrival).
If the big government types get their way, soon we'll just chip children (RFID) at birth--won't that just be lovely!
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Libby lied to investigators (and, I believe he was also charged with perjuring himself when testifying to a grand jury). Congress has not had anything to do with this case--save the predictable grandstanding. Personally, before Martha Stewart went down for it, I was not aware that lying to official investigators (i.e. the police, FBI, etc) was a crime--ignorance is no excuse, I guess, but still.
Every sensible government official by now has learned that "I do not recall" is the only statement you should ever make under oath--why Libby thought he should say _anything_ other than that is completely beyond me.
And just for the record, Richard Armitage has not only admitted he was the "leaker", but he also told Fitzgerald about it _before_ Libby was even given a chance to lie to investigators. Fitzgerald told him to keep quiet about it.
So, what grand crime did Libby actually impede the investigation of?
If disclosing Plame's identity (and the fairly well-known CIA front "Brewster Jennings" she worked for) was a crime, why hasn't Armitage been prosecuted?
At least according to the Volokh Conspiracy http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_05_13-2007 _05_19.shtml#1179259134:
But both under California law and under federal law, it's illegal to tell prospective roomates about one's roommate preference, even when it's legal to actually discriminate based on that preference. It's illegal to put out an ad saying "Single white female seeks same to share apartment" (that's expressing a preference based on race and marital status), or "lesbian pagan seeks same" (preference based on sexual orientation and religion) -- and it's illegal to say that to people in person.
This does seem pretty ridiculous, and clearly not very many people get in trouble for placing such ads, but there is some case law supporting it. In the roommates.com case, since they not only encouraged placing such statements, but seemingly also more-or-less required it, they were exposing themselves to liability. Plus, since they have much deeper pockets than your typical "SWF seeks same", they were much more likely to be taken to court.
H-1B visas are a boon for employers. They not just have the power of a job, but the power to send people packing back to their homeland, so of course, H-1B people end up very docile shills, as they have a lot to lose.
They're not nearly so docile now that H1 transfers are _relatively_ easy to do. Many startup employers here in Silicon Valley don't want to deal with H-1B's anymore because the legal expenses/hassles really add up, but will still hire them for difficult to fill positions. I personally have hired for permanent positions about 10 H-1Bs over the past 10 years--always at competitive wages and never to replace a current employee (it is very hard to find highly skilled embedded/networking software engineers).
Nearly all the H-1B candidates I've ever hired wanted to use it as a path to citizenship--not what H-1B was intended for, but good for the country (at least in my opinion).
I have on occasion reluctantly dealt with contracting outfits that sent us foreign workers (presumably also on H-1B)--these guys did seem like they might be getting screwed by their agency--though they were probably hoping some client would hire them away so they could stay in the US permanently too.
Tens of thousands of the best and brightest engineers in China, India (& the rest of the world) would love to come to the US--permanently. It will only harm the US if we don't at least allow some of the best of the best do so.
Their contracts with the government allow them to pass court awarded punitive damages to the government? On TV doctor dramas, punitive damages are awarded if there is evidence of gross negligence. For what possible reason would the government enter such an agreement? You do realize that Sandia Labs is owned by the US government, don't you? It is operated by a corporation, under contract, however. I've never worked for any of the government labs, but I'm guessing if you do, you work for the government, not the corporation or university that manages the place. Since this was a wrongful termination suit, he sued his employer (i.e. the US government), not the company that his employer contracted to run the joint (the Sandia Corporation).
Based on my experience in hotels in China aimed at foreign tourists (so-called 5-star hotels--certified 5-star by the Chinese government), all of them appeared to have unfiltered internet access available. Since many of them are affiliated with big western hotel chains, I'm guessing they get their feeds from their corporate parent, although the government itself may provide unfiltered feeds to hotels targeted at foreigners. I observed this in several major cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Xian & Guangzhou). On the other hand, the great firewall is in place and working very nicely on residential dial-up, DSL, and in internet cafes (my nephew has at times had both dial-up and DSL service).
b) No search & seizure without a warrant. One person on all of those "international calls" was an American whose call was searched and seized without a warrant. Make no mistake. The US Constitution says nothing involving an American can be searched and seized without a warrant.
Have you actually read the constitution (or to be more accurate, the 4th amendment)? What is says is:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Have you ever been through US Customs? Been stopped at a police drunk test roadblock? Been searched before getting on an airplane? Been searched before entering a _Courthouse_ or other government building? I believe the key wording here is "unreasonable searches and seizures". Now, I may feel that at least some of the foregoing are unreasonable, but obviously, the courts do not.
The NSA was also monitoring all Americans' calls - every citizen in America was being wiretapped, all without probable cause, all without a warrant. Flat out, the US Constitution completely and expressly forbids this, and there is no room for an alternative interpretation of the Constitution on this issue.
What is your source for this bombshell? Even the NSA takes privacy seriously--I know, I received a briefing on acceptable and unacceptable actions _from the NSA_ when I was involved in testing a signal intelligence system several years ago. It was something that they seemed to take quite seriously. And, again, it doesn't seem like you've actually read the constitution--that annoying "unreasonable" rears its ugly head again.
IANAL, but it seems to me that the government has a stronger case here than it did on the 'anonymized' call detail information they have also sought. Based on what I've read, it seems like many legal scholars expect the Circuit Court to overturn the decision.
Always on-line is one of the biggest problems with using disk drives for backup. Mechanical failure and high incremental cost (for each additional storage unit) are other big problems.
In my _home_ network (server w/ 1.2TB online, 1TB in a hw raid5, 250GB for 'scratch', 4 desktop PCs, 1 laptop), I use an LTO2 drive for backups, but keep monthly backups for 15 months, keep weekly backups (mostly differential/incrementals) for 4 months, and keep daily backups (incremental of only 'critical' data) for 2 months. My wife complained that I didn't have a _longer_ term backup recovery plan--so now I've added yearly tapes that I never plan to re-use.
I spent $1500 on the tape drive, but buy tapes for less than $30. Currently I have >3.5TB in backups on ~20 tapes, and I can follow a very fixed pattern of tape rotation (tape change 2x per week, use the same daily tape all week, switch to a weekly/monthly/yearly tape on the weekend, then switch back to a daily tape for the next week). OK, so I've got about $2100 in this backup strategy, and I could store 3.5TB on about $2000 worth of 500GB drives, but how would I rotate them, and how would I protect nearly all of the data against fire all the time? (I keep my non-mounted tapes in the 1800lb fireproof safe right next to the server). Furthermore, 2 years from now, when I've used ~30 tapes, I'll still have those critical files my wife or child accidentally deleted in late 2006.
I'll be the first to admit my home server is large for 'normal' people, but this is slashdot--surely others here have larger setups?
If you think that everything attempted without certainty of success qualifies as an 'experiment', then it is no wonder you voded for Nader. Let's run an experiment with Nader as President.....
By your line of reasoning, this weekend I'm going to watch the Steelers-Seahawks experiment. One question: If the Superbowl is an experiment, what is the hypothesis?
The stories about scientists saying bees couldn't fly was always about bumblebees, not bees in general. Further, it has always been a myth--presumably based on a static evaluation of the wings of a bumblebee as a airfoil.
Clearly everyone has always known that insects fly by beating their wings--a static model just doesn't show that the bumblebees wings have enough lift.
I believe that this statement is normally attributed to the SS109 round, not M16s in general.
The typical claim is that SS109 bullets are dynamically unstable in flesh, though they are stable in flight, so they begin to tumble upon entry, doing lots of damage along the way.
Personally, I find this claim doubtful, though I have no hard evidence one way or the other.
It is entirely possible that keeping the product hot and in the news was the whole point.
Could Rockstar have done this on purpose to increase sales? If the 'hackers' hadn't exposed HotCoffee, Rockstar could have seeded the idea. As I see it, the only real downside to Rockstar is that HotCoffee was exposed too soon--the game seemed to still be selling quite well.
Oops. Correcting my mistake--he wrote a second article in Oct 2003--the first article was written in July 2003.
Even if she was still undercover, if she had not been posted outside the US in the last 5 years, no violation of law occurred.
She was last stationed out of the country in 1997. In order to violate the law in question, her cover had to have been broken by the end of 2002--Novak's article was written in October of 2003.
From http://washingtontimes.com/national/20050715-12125 7-9887r.htm:
"She made no bones about the fact that she was an agency employee and her husband was a diplomat," Fred Rustmann, a covert agent from 1966 to 1990...
"Her neighbors knew this, her friends knew this, his friends knew this. A lot of blame could be put on to central cover staff and the agency because they weren't minding the store here.... The agency never changed her cover status."
Mr. Rustmann, who spent 20 of his 24 years in the agency under "nonofficial cover" -- also known as a NOC, the same status as the wife of Mr. Wilson -- also said that she worked under extremely light cover.
In addition, Mrs. Plame hadn't been out as an NOC since 1997, when she returned from her last assignment, married Mr. Wilson and had twins, USA Today reported yesterday
Did you see the recent news how Bush signed into law, the new $800B (billion!) dollar cap on the defecit. This is the third increase in the spending cap Bush has passed in his first term as president.
Yes, you are right, rather than extend the debt ceiling, the US would be better off if we just defaulted on the debt--Er, no I guess not.
btw, it isn't a cap on the deficit or on spending it is an increase of the cap on the total allowable national debt--furthermore, according to this memo, raising the debt ceiling has happened ~65 times between 1954 and 1993, or about 1.5 times a year. There were 7 increases during Carter's administration, 16 during Reagan's two terms, and 5 during Bush 41's term (unless I've messed up term start dates).
I didn't find data on all of Clinton's time in office, presumably there were fewer then since by the end of his administration the debt started to go down. However the first Clinton debt ceiling increase was $225B, and the second was $530B, in April and August of 1993. Apparently things held together until at least 1996, when there was a debt crisis as we approached the debt ceiling again.
You are double counting the doubling of their original counting--perhaps RTFA next time--they are suggesting that 130,000 votes went to bush that statistically should have gone to kerry--yielding a total swing of 260,000.
It just so happens that I doubt the correctness of their study, but even those that agree with their study should base any claims on what the study actually says.
The turnout doesn't really look to be record in terms of percentages (it was 59.9% in 1984, and 61.3% in 1992), nor is it the case that less than 50% of eligible voters voted.
But perhaps you meant fewer than half the people who could have registered voted--which almost certainly is true. On the other hand, if someone can't even bother to fill out a simple form that is readily available nearly everywhere, I don't think their lack of participation should count for anything.
How do you think groups like Al Qaeda will react when Bush is re-elected. Do you realize what happened on 9/11, and why it happened?
Unless you intended "why it happened?" to be because terrorists want attention to their cause and will use any means necessary including crimes against humanity, you shouldn't have gotten the insightful mod you have received.
There is no defensible excuse for terrorism, anyone who offers an excuse is really nothing but a shill for the terrorists.
Even if unbiased examination of the facts indicate that the US has wronged someone or some group, terrorism is an immoral response--two wrongs NEVER make a right. The same applies to US foreign policy--however, everyone in the world today may be too close to the issue to be unbiased--history will judge our actions--for good or bad.
-se
Slashdot Mirror
It costs $2,500 to unlock this new software feature.
That is not (entirely) accurate. The autopilot feature is currently on the price list as a $2500 option. I'm under the impression that all current cars _may_ have the right sensors (they are generally helpful in getting good collision avoidance ratings--I'm not sure but I assume if you have the hardware and you did _not_ pay for autopilot when it was available as an option, then you may be able to pay now to enable the feature).
However, my car, built in late September, 2014, was not priced under the current pricing model--there was no autopilot option at that time, yet my car (like most cars built in late September, 2014) has all the sensors and autopilot is fully enabled on my vehicle as of the software update I installed this morning. I did pay for other options that are no longer available (as I recall, parking sensors and fog lights), but I did not have to pay $2500 to enable autopilot. -se
it's simple to see that either six months is as much as was legally required (in which case they followed the law) or it is not (in which case they broke the law).
Dodd-Frank and HIPAA both specify at least 5 years (I think HIPAA is 6). Of course, there is no reason to believe that the government would hold itself to anything remotely like the standards that they not only expect, but demand (under penalty of imprisonment) from everyone else.
_ALL_ innovation "costs" jobs. That is pretty much what innovation means--getting either more or better for less. As a society, we get more produced value for less cost (often as less labor)--freeing resources (i.e. labor) to make products that previously never existed.
This is because the care offered by the NHS is already to a high standard. Private providers need to compete in order to make people feel that additional insurance has value.
Apparently feeding & providing water to patients is gold-plated service, far beyond the "high standard" that NHS offers: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2287332/Nearly-1-200-people-starved-death-NHS-hospitals-nurses-busy-feed-patients.html
Luckily, since the infinite wisdom of our congress has instituted a new tax on tanning salons, the incidence of melanoma among US caucasian girls will now go back down a bit. Coincidentally, tanning beds were introduced in the US about 1980, and can triple the risk of melanoma (http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/05/27/tanning.booth.melanoma/).
The biggest problem with just dropping RSTs is that you can't stop the RSTs going to the other end of the connection--your torrent client may still think the session is open, but your peer will think that it is closed. RST is typically only used for abnormal termination, FIN (and the corresponding FIN/ACK) are used for 'normal' session closing. There is some additional risk to dropping RSTs in that over time all sessions that were supposed to be terminated 'abnormally' will linger, possibly forever, but if you only did RST dropping on the port you used for bittorrent, you could easily monitor them (and perhaps kill them manually, if necessary, if/when you stop your bittorrent client.
I think all the other points you made were spot on (at least as far as I know, which isn't very far), but we should never underestimate some marketing guy's ability to convince the general public they need something 'better'--and bigger numbers make for the easiest sales pitch.
-se
If the big government types get their way, soon we'll just chip children (RFID) at birth--won't that just be lovely!
-se
Every sensible government official by now has learned that "I do not recall" is the only statement you should ever make under oath--why Libby thought he should say _anything_ other than that is completely beyond me.
And just for the record, Richard Armitage has not only admitted he was the "leaker", but he also told Fitzgerald about it _before_ Libby was even given a chance to lie to investigators. Fitzgerald told him to keep quiet about it.
So, what grand crime did Libby actually impede the investigation of?
If disclosing Plame's identity (and the fairly well-known CIA front "Brewster Jennings" she worked for) was a crime, why hasn't Armitage been prosecuted?
This does seem pretty ridiculous, and clearly not very many people get in trouble for placing such ads, but there is some case law supporting it. In the roommates.com case, since they not only encouraged placing such statements, but seemingly also more-or-less required it, they were exposing themselves to liability. Plus, since they have much deeper pockets than your typical "SWF seeks same", they were much more likely to be taken to court.
They're not nearly so docile now that H1 transfers are _relatively_ easy to do. Many startup employers here in Silicon Valley don't want to deal with H-1B's anymore because the legal expenses/hassles really add up, but will still hire them for difficult to fill positions. I personally have hired for permanent positions about 10 H-1Bs over the past 10 years--always at competitive wages and never to replace a current employee (it is very hard to find highly skilled embedded/networking software engineers).
Nearly all the H-1B candidates I've ever hired wanted to use it as a path to citizenship--not what H-1B was intended for, but good for the country (at least in my opinion).
I have on occasion reluctantly dealt with contracting outfits that sent us foreign workers (presumably also on H-1B)--these guys did seem like they might be getting screwed by their agency--though they were probably hoping some client would hire them away so they could stay in the US permanently too.
Tens of thousands of the best and brightest engineers in China, India (& the rest of the world) would love to come to the US--permanently. It will only harm the US if we don't at least allow some of the best of the best do so.
Based on my experience in hotels in China aimed at foreign tourists (so-called 5-star hotels--certified 5-star by the Chinese government), all of them appeared to have unfiltered internet access available. Since many of them are affiliated with big western hotel chains, I'm guessing they get their feeds from their corporate parent, although the government itself may provide unfiltered feeds to hotels targeted at foreigners. I observed this in several major cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Xian & Guangzhou). On the other hand, the great firewall is in place and working very nicely on residential dial-up, DSL, and in internet cafes (my nephew has at times had both dial-up and DSL service).
Have you actually read the constitution (or to be more accurate, the 4th amendment)? What is says is:
Have you ever been through US Customs? Been stopped at a police drunk test roadblock? Been searched before getting on an airplane? Been searched before entering a _Courthouse_ or other government building? I believe the key wording here is "unreasonable searches and seizures". Now, I may feel that at least some of the foregoing are unreasonable, but obviously, the courts do not.
What is your source for this bombshell? Even the NSA takes privacy seriously--I know, I received a briefing on acceptable and unacceptable actions _from the NSA_ when I was involved in testing a signal intelligence system several years ago. It was something that they seemed to take quite seriously. And, again, it doesn't seem like you've actually read the constitution--that annoying "unreasonable" rears its ugly head again.IANAL, but it seems to me that the government has a stronger case here than it did on the 'anonymized' call detail information they have also sought. Based on what I've read, it seems like many legal scholars expect the Circuit Court to overturn the decision.
In my _home_ network (server w/ 1.2TB online, 1TB in a hw raid5, 250GB for 'scratch', 4 desktop PCs, 1 laptop), I use an LTO2 drive for backups, but keep monthly backups for 15 months, keep weekly backups (mostly differential/incrementals) for 4 months, and keep daily backups (incremental of only 'critical' data) for 2 months. My wife complained that I didn't have a _longer_ term backup recovery plan--so now I've added yearly tapes that I never plan to re-use.
I spent $1500 on the tape drive, but buy tapes for less than $30. Currently I have >3.5TB in backups on ~20 tapes, and I can follow a very fixed pattern of tape rotation (tape change 2x per week, use the same daily tape all week, switch to a weekly/monthly/yearly tape on the weekend, then switch back to a daily tape for the next week). OK, so I've got about $2100 in this backup strategy, and I could store 3.5TB on about $2000 worth of 500GB drives, but how would I rotate them, and how would I protect nearly all of the data against fire all the time? (I keep my non-mounted tapes in the 1800lb fireproof safe right next to the server). Furthermore, 2 years from now, when I've used ~30 tapes, I'll still have those critical files my wife or child accidentally deleted in late 2006.
I'll be the first to admit my home server is large for 'normal' people, but this is slashdot--surely others here have larger setups?
-se
By your line of reasoning, this weekend I'm going to watch the Steelers-Seahawks experiment. One question: If the Superbowl is an experiment, what is the hypothesis?
Clearly everyone has always known that insects fly by beating their wings--a static model just doesn't show that the bumblebees wings have enough lift.
The typical claim is that SS109 bullets are dynamically unstable in flesh, though they are stable in flight, so they begin to tumble upon entry, doing lots of damage along the way.
Personally, I find this claim doubtful, though I have no hard evidence one way or the other.
Could Rockstar have done this on purpose to increase sales? If the 'hackers' hadn't exposed HotCoffee, Rockstar could have seeded the idea. As I see it, the only real downside to Rockstar is that HotCoffee was exposed too soon--the game seemed to still be selling quite well.
-se
Oops. Correcting my mistake--he wrote a second article in Oct 2003--the first article was written in July 2003. Even if she was still undercover, if she had not been posted outside the US in the last 5 years, no violation of law occurred.
"She made no bones about the fact that she was an agency employee and her husband was a diplomat," Fred Rustmann, a covert agent from 1966 to 1990 ...
"Her neighbors knew this, her friends knew this, his friends knew this. A lot of blame could be put on to central cover staff and the agency because they weren't minding the store here. ... The agency never changed her cover status."
Mr. Rustmann, who spent 20 of his 24 years in the agency under "nonofficial cover" -- also known as a NOC, the same status as the wife of Mr. Wilson -- also said that she worked under extremely light cover.
In addition, Mrs. Plame hadn't been out as an NOC since 1997, when she returned from her last assignment, married Mr. Wilson and had twins, USA Today reported yesterday
Yes, you are right, rather than extend the debt ceiling, the US would be better off if we just defaulted on the debt--Er, no I guess not.
btw, it isn't a cap on the deficit or on spending it is an increase of the cap on the total allowable national debt--furthermore, according to this memo, raising the debt ceiling has happened ~65 times between 1954 and 1993, or about 1.5 times a year. There were 7 increases during Carter's administration, 16 during Reagan's two terms, and 5 during Bush 41's term (unless I've messed up term start dates).
I didn't find data on all of Clinton's time in office, presumably there were fewer then since by the end of his administration the debt started to go down. However the first Clinton debt ceiling increase was $225B, and the second was $530B, in April and August of 1993. Apparently things held together until at least 1996, when there was a debt crisis as we approached the debt ceiling again.
-se
It just so happens that I doubt the correctness of their study, but even those that agree with their study should base any claims on what the study actually says.
Sorry, you are incorrect: Reuters Graphic
The turnout doesn't really look to be record in terms of percentages (it was 59.9% in 1984, and 61.3% in 1992), nor is it the case that less than 50% of eligible voters voted.
But perhaps you meant fewer than half the people who could have registered voted--which almost certainly is true. On the other hand, if someone can't even bother to fill out a simple form that is readily available nearly everywhere, I don't think their lack of participation should count for anything.
-se
How do you think groups like Al Qaeda will react when Bush is re-elected. Do you realize what happened on 9/11, and why it happened? Unless you intended "why it happened?" to be because terrorists want attention to their cause and will use any means necessary including crimes against humanity, you shouldn't have gotten the insightful mod you have received. There is no defensible excuse for terrorism, anyone who offers an excuse is really nothing but a shill for the terrorists. Even if unbiased examination of the facts indicate that the US has wronged someone or some group, terrorism is an immoral response--two wrongs NEVER make a right. The same applies to US foreign policy--however, everyone in the world today may be too close to the issue to be unbiased--history will judge our actions--for good or bad. -se