If a candidate wins the popular vote by a landslide but is not elected president then there could be a problem with the system. This is just one of the checks to the system.
That seems to be the only place we don't agree.
Since the "popular vote" is not part of the system, and has no effect on the result of the system, it cannot be a check on the system. Exit polling is the same. If either differs from the actual result, at best we can ask "why", and the answers are simple. For the popular vote, the difference is because the people who designed the system explicitely wanted to even out the power amongst the states despite population differences. For polling, it's only a sample, largely self-selected, and nothing keeps a respondent from lying.
Now, you can use the difference to argue that the system should be changed, but that's some else. And maybe we actually agree, just you mean check in a different sense than I'm reading it.
Do you think we should get rid of the "meaningless tally" that each state uses in the general election...
Nobody but you has said that the individual state counts are meaningless. Since the STATE has chosen to define those numbers, they are hardly meaningless. OTH, there is no meaning to the "national popular vote", because it is used to determine absolutely nothing.
It's not in the Constitution, so why should we bother, right?
It is not in the US Constitution, but it may be in the state constitution, and is certainly in the state statutes.
How about we just flip coins or better yet sell the votes to the highest bidder.
I know you are being sarcastic, but there is nothing to prevent a state from using just such a system to decide electors. In fact, as some have mentioned, there is a move to sidestep the reasons for the Constitutional provisions and effectively bypass the electoral college by assigning a state's electors to the winner of the "popular vote". Why any state would want to yield what little power it has in the process is beyond me. How the voters in a state where candidate A wins by a landslide would put up with all the electors voting for B based on how the rest of the country votes is unimaginable.
Our voting system is severely broken.
I do not agree. It has worked for more than 200 years. It is more complicated than a simple majority vote because the founders designed it that way for good reasons. The fact that they don't teach those reasons in modern civics classes doesn't mean they don't exist.
In ANY case, the time to change the voting rules is before the election. It's too late today to get any real change before the next election.
Universities are intended to provide a well-rounded education and a forum for debating issues and ideas. Churches are not. They serve radically different purposes.
To say that religious discussion at a University is unwelcome because scientific lectures are not welcome in church services is displaying both ignorance of the functions of both venues and intolerance.
Our local Uni regularly has theological discussions open to the public. It drives our local token athiest nuts, but at least people get to hear the ideas and judge for themselves.
Switching to a proportional system would alleviate a lot of the problems with elections and the two party system.
Nah, it would just have the loser whining (and maybe suing) over how the numbers are rounded. And, except for the quantization noise, the result would be no different than a simple national popular vote, which the founders explicitely chose not to implement for reasons elsewhere described. And probably throw a lot more elections into the House when a simple majority doesn't occur.
Yes there is - it's the total number of individual votes.
No. That number has no meaning. It has even less meaning than counting the number of butterflies that you see outside your window each morning. It's like adding up the days of the week (rhis week is 13+14+15+16+17+18+19) and thinking the sum means somehing. It's a sham used by losers to complain.
I think this has been done since the first presidential election,
I think not, since the first elections were done while the people who designed the system were still around, and since there is no guarantee that there IS a state election to pick electors. IIRC, Missouri did not vote for electors until 1950 or so, but I can't put my finger on the link that shows it. In any case, the means of selecting electors is not specified by the Constitution, it's up to the states.
No, it is not a waste of time. Pointing out inconsistencies in the system can help improve the system.
The electoral college and lack of popular vote is not an incosistency of the system, it IS the system. Improving the system takes more than creating a meaningless tally and complaining that it has no meaning.
So it's not really a rampant problem but maybe there are still a few adjustments to be made.
I think the system works pretty well, even when the candidate I support loses. It is the system we have, and until it is changed, it should be followed. If it is unfair, the time to change it is before the election.
Can we PLEASE stop this nonsense about a "popular vote" for US President? There simply IS NO popular vote, at least not on a national level.
The Constitution defines how we elect the pres and VP. It says nothing about a nationwide popular vote. The STATES pick their allocated number of electors, and it is those electors who vote for specific people to be pres and VP. It is not even specified in the Constitution that the electors must vote for the people that the state picked them to. Some states don't even mandate that.
It is emotional hyperbole to pretend that someone is "screwed out" of winning a vote that doesn't exist. It makes no more sense to say that someone won the "popular vote" for US president than to claim that someone was elected president of north america because he got more votes for president of his country than others got to be president of theirs.
Whoever it was that started adding up the state-by-state vote counts and calling it the "popular vote" should be shot. Any school that teaches it should by decertified.
Not only is the "popular vote" undefined, it is not a true representation of popularity. People vote not just for who they prefer, but for who they think can win. If you prefer A over B and B over C, but you know that A cannot win, you'll probably vote for B to prevent C from winning. B's good showing in the "popular vote" is biased; no, rather A's low "popularity" is biased based on expected failure. A self-fulfilling prophecy. In any case, in the US, there IS NO popular vote, so wasting time talking about it is just wasting time.
The rest of us are happy with the switch to digital, because we want more choice in what we can watch and in the services we can get.
More choice? Let's see.
Right now, I have 2 DVD-R's, 2 VCRs, a DVR/TV, and 5 TVs. With analog cable, I can automatically record 5 different channels and watch 5 others at the same time. More likely, when I am gone for a week or two, I can use the DVR as the main recorder and the others for other channels when the DVR is busy.
With a "convenient set-top box", I get one channel at a time. If I want to record a MythBusters, and that box isn't set to 'Discovery', I get something else. If I want to record Deadliest Catch while watching something else, ummm, no, I cannot. If I go away for a week and want to record the new Monks, Psychs, and LOCI, no problem (all USA). If I want the Atlantis and Flash too (Sci-Fi), sorry, cannot. Nobody will be home to change the channel on my convenient set-top box.
None of my 'TVs' are 40 years old. They all work just fine.
Comcast is, indeed, trying to force people into digital services, and I don't expect them to provide a single analog signal they aren't forced to, and even then I expect the quality of service will be about 30dB below what we get now. They pulled Oxygen and Hallmark and MSNBC a few weeks ago, and I actually had a Comcast driod telling me that I could do everything I'm doing now if I paid extra for the digital box. They also haven't bothered putting anything digital in those channels, even though "we can carry so much more in a digital channel" was the excuse for dropping them.
Yeah, you want to pay more for new things you want, but I got what I need. I don't need the all-or-nothing failure mode of digital, for one thing. A fuzzy analog signal is more watchable than no signal from digital.
IEEE1394b (FireWire) has defined two modes of bus operation. Asynchronous and Isochronous.
Async is used for devices like disks where you want to read a block but it doesn't really matter if the block doesn't come back right away.
Isochronous provides a fixed amount of bus bandwidth at fixed times, which is important if you are streaming audio or video.
Iso is guaranteed up to 80% of the bandwidth. Asynch is guaranteed at least 20%.
As for this "new standard" the story is talking about, no, it isn't new. 1394b has had
S3200 defined for a long time. VERY long time. Nobody has implemented it. We needed it not for the bandwidth, but for the long-cable capabilities, and we've been waiting... Fortunately, there are a couple of 1394b PHY (physical interface) chips on the market, and people are making 1394a-connectored long-cable hubs.
The 1394 standard is really interesting, including the hardware handshakes etc and bus topology maps you can use to know what is connected where.
It's the length in feet of a half-wave dipole antenna where f is frequency in MHz.
There are also questions about quarter-wave antennae, but I think most people can divide 468 by 2 and come up with the equation L=234/f, so memorizing one covers both.
The only other similar equation necessary is lamdba = 300/f, where lambda is wavelength in meters and f is frequency in MHz. This is for questions that deal with "what band is..."
You can reply until you're blue in the face about how great Morse is, but that's not relevant to the topic at hand.
That's right, Morse is not relevant. At all. You don't need to know Morse code to get any level of amateur radio license. Whining about how difficult it is to learn Morse code as an excuse for not getting a license is OVER.
It's a 35 question MULTIPLE CHOICE test, out of which you need only 75% to pass. Many of the questions are common sense. Most of the rest require a small amount of memorization at best. You can get a complete list of all the possible questions, as well as all the correct answers, off the net.
The cost for the test varies from about $15 to free. (Yes, one VEC charges nothing for giving the test.) If you live anywhere near Dayton, OH, you can take your test one day and BE ON THE AIR the next. On Hamvention weekend, the VEC that does testing uploads the data themselves, so Friday testees know their callsigns on Saturday.
You can go from ignorant to licensed in a weekend, if you work at it. I know, because for the last three years our group has given weekend classes to people who have an interest but no background, with a test on Sunday afternoon, and we have a 100% pass percentage, with a large number of people getting 100% right.
E=IR. P=IE. L=486/f. That's about all the math you need.
And Blakey Rat, that wasn't directed at you 'cause you weren't the one whining, it was information for everyone.
I suspect that Shrinky Dinks are already patented.
What I want to know, is if Shrinky Dinks shrink when heated, why isn't fusing the toner to the Dink making it shrink? I mean, if you use the wrong transparency film in a laser printer, it MELTS and makes a horrible mess. Why aren't the Dinkys Shrinky?
If we are to stop this kind of thing happening in future we need to make companies as scared of violating the copyright of FOSS as they are of violating the copyright of proprietary software.
That certainly would stop it from happening in the future. It would also drive companies right into the arms of Microsoft.
Which is easier for a corporate computer manufacturer PHB?
Pay a licensing fee once to one company for all the software on a a system, and distribute nothing extra.
Pay someone to develop code for specific hardware bits that needs to be version controlled so nobody ever gets sent the wrong code for their version of the hardware, and keep CDs on hand just in case someone asks for the software. Meanwhile, stay on top of all the copyright issues in all the jurisdictions where the product is sold and modify the distribution accordingly. (mp3 and gif, anyone?)
Option 1 is a lot simpler. If your target audience has no idea what Linux is, or even how to pronounce it, you can count on zero sales based on OS. You get Microsoft to discount the licenses because these are starter systems and every system sold today is a Microsoft user for the rest of his life. Your costs are about the same either way, and if you wind up a target for a copyright lawsuit over some tiny bit of code that you left in the distribution, the latter could cost a lot more.
What is copy protection but broad-brush DRM? You cannot play your region 2 DVD in my region 1 player. You cannot copy your DVD to my (or your own) video tape. I cannot play my PC video game unless I have the original disk in the drive, even if all the code has been copied to my hard drive.
Fine-grained DRM gets to the level that I cannot play your mp3 on my player, or you cannot play your own mp3 on a different player than the one you bought it for.
It's still a limitation on using a piece of media for perfectly legal purposes.
... but common sense dictates that the intent of the amendment was to prevent someone from being president-for-life,
I disagree. Common sense tells me that if the goal was to prevent serving more than a set number of terms or years, the authors would have written something talking about years or terms, and not about the number of times being elected to the office. Now, the goal of the people initiating the amendment might have been just what you say and perhaps a compromise was required to get the amendment passed. I can believe that. BUT, if a compromise was necessary, it is dishonest to then revert to the precompromise action once that amendment passed.
In many pieces of legislation, the goal of the author is often considered when the courts consider the law itself. "Didn't word it well enough" or "meant it to say" are perhaps valid concerns in that case. But when a deliberate compromise is required to get something to pass, the initial intent of the initial author should no longer be the guiding principle. He accepted the compromise, too.
Seeing as the SCOTUS overruled Florida's Supreme Court regarding the recount, I have to disagree with your assertion that they upheld the right of a state to enact their own laws regarding the selection of electors.
Just as SCOTUS is not authorized to change or create law, the SCOFLA is not authorized to change or create Florida law. SCOTUS said SCOFLA erred by overstepping their bounds in changing the Florida legislature's election law. The legislative branch is the ones who make the laws, and they are the ones who make the law setting deadlines for things. Thus, SCOTUS did, indeed, protect the legislative process in Florida, which is how Florida determines how its electors are chosen. The most SCOFLA can do is call the process unconstitutional and have the legislature start over, but that is not what SCOFLA did.
Further, as someone else pointed out, I think, equal protections means that everyone gets recounted, and not just the hand-picked few counties that might change the result. Of course, this was not a recount, but a re-recount. There is a limit to the number of times a recount should be allowed, given there are Constitutionally-written deadlines for completion of the process. Allowing lawsuits in one state that are aimed to prevent them from finishing in time also violates the equal protection clause, since that state's electors not being certified by the deadline means the voters in that state have NO say in the result.
If the presidential candidate in question was a Republican,
There is no Presidential candidate involved. The hypothetical situation is a Democrat President (perhaps Hillary), a Democrat VP (perhaps Bill), and Republican Speaker of the House.
then the more conservative members of the court would vote in favor if him becoming president,
While that would be the EFFECT of their vote, their actual "votes" would be either the 22nd Amendment does or does not prohibit serving as President if the pathway to the office does not include being ELECTED as President. In other words, the coservative members would vote for a conservative interpretation of the Constitution, and the liberal members would seek guidance in the laws of other countries and ignore the explicit language of the Constitution they took an oath to support and defend.
Your statement echoes the mistake that many people make about the SCOTUS decision regarding Gore. They did NOT elect Bush, they did not vote FOR Bush, they upheld the right of a STATE to enact their own laws regarding the selection of electors. The Constitution is rather clear about that. If Gore didn't like the Florida laws about selecting electors, the right time to file suit was before they got in his way.
... as anyone who is sworn in must be eligible under the Constitution to serve.
While the 12th Amendment says "But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States", the 22nd prohibits only the ELECTION to office, not serving therein. Nothing I see in the Constitution talks about eligibility to serve as President (other than natural born citizen and the age limit.) It is reasonable to assume that when the word "elected" is used, it is limited to that action, and that the 12th Amendment serves only to ensure that the citizen and age limits apply to the office of VP so that the VP can assume the role of Pres. if necessary. (There was nothing in the Constitution preventing someone for running for Pres. who was too young or not a natural born citizen, only that he could not serve. Apparently, he could serve as VP.)
If you thought the furor over SCOTUS stopping Gore's shenanigans trying to keep Florida's electors from being certified according to Florida's laws was something, just wait until SCOTUS has to rule on whether the 22nd A means one cannot SERVE despite clear terminology that the limit is "elected", and Bill gets passed over for a Republican speaker of the house when Hill steps down. I'd almost pay to watch that.
Meaning someone (e.g. a former V.P.) can serve up to 2 years followed by being elected twice, for a total of 10 years.
And then be elected as VP again, and become Pres. one day after the inauguration,
which makes 14, and then be elected VP and promoted, making 18... that's how Bill's
going to weasel his way back into office, as Hill's VP. Just watch.
By selling the product at $10USD in a foreign market, it is shown that the product still generates profit (or they wouldn't sell it that low).
I have no intention of defending this company for shutting off users who bought their product from an international dealer, because that is what "international" means. They can sell internationally.
However, your statement isn't in general true. There are, for many products, tariffs and import duties that make it more expensive to sell in certain markets, and likewise less expensive in others. I was once almost charged $25 per case for "camera cases" by an over-zealous customs agent because they were aluminum, and that is the import duty for "aluminum camera cases". It was an incredible hour out of my life, hearing that "cardboard" cases were duty free (so he wouldn't charge me duty on the boxes that the cameras themselves were shipped in). I finally got through to him that these were not "camera cases" as in "put my expensive Nikon camera in a carrying case", but "metal housings" for the OEM camera circuit boards that were in the same shipment. Sheesh.
Also, the distributor's costs in another country may be lower (lower wages for the wage slaves, etc.) so the distributor may mark the wholesale price up less.
And finally, the differing regulations regarding radio emissions (as one example) may make it much more costly to certify a piece of equipment in the US than in some other country, and the other country may get a slightly different, less expensive version of a product because it doesn't have to be as well shielded. Or it may have different/limited features due to differing laws.
Violating Regional Licensing or whatever cannot possibly "hurt" a company, if the company would lose money selling it in the US at $10 a copy, there is no way they are going to sell it for $10 a copy in Russia. At worst the company won't make as much profit as they want.
It would hurt the local distributor, who may have had to purchase in lots of 100 to get his discount, when an overseas dealer who signed a contract to sell only in Europe undercuts his price in the US. Or a foreign (to the US) dealer sells radio equipment that has different features, and the user expects the US repair facilities to be able to fix it when it breaks, under warranty. And in the latter case, the manufacturer may have legal issues even though his dealer is the one importing non-FCC type-accepted products.
I think the part of the equation that TdR misses is that the issue is not black and white.
If you are using virtualization to create multiple general-purpose servers, then perhaps your security is going to be worse than using individual hardware.
If you are using virtualization to provide quasi-independent special purpose servers on one hardware platform, I think his argument is not so correct.
I'm moving into virtualization to provide multiple limited-access special purpose servers on one piece of hardware that would be massive overkill were it to be the real host for any one of them. In my opinion, this increases security because:
Almost nobody is allowed to log in but me. The biggest lack of security is the user.
Almost nobody is allowed to log in but me. I don't need to care if someone needs a hole poked through the iptables for a VNC connection offsite, e.g..
Each server runs one specialized service, which I can lock down without having to worry about what other things need access. And whatever hole that service has, isn't on any other server.
I can create the first server, learn the specifics of that distro as far as security and access control, and clone it almost trivially once I have it locked down.
Full, complete, bootable backup is trivial, which makes it more likely. That applies even to Windows systems where complete backups really aren't. I am less likely to try to clean up a hacked server because I know that restoring it to the last backup state is also trivial.
In an environment where every ethernet line is switched, I can still monitor ALL traffic into and out of my virtual servers for intrusion detection.
I can trivially remove any hacked server from the net while still having a virtual console to it.
I can put operating systems that are closed source and poorly documented wrt open ports behind a NAT interface, so while it appears to the user (me) like it is on the net, it's a one-way connection and nobody from the outside can connect. (E.g., WinXP, NT, etc.)
I think the short version of that is that administration of ten virtual servers is much easier than ten physical servers, and as such, mistakes that allow compromises are less likely, and when they happen, cleanup is much easier.
Well, I haven't checked the RFC, but I think that spaces are illegal inside a URL, so you are supposed to encode them, at a minimum. Likewise other special characters.
If that's true, then Amazon got a patent on creating invalid URLs.
If you are referring to ASRS, then no, the reports are not anonymous. In fact, it is better than that. Pilots are encouraged to report problems, even ones involving the violation of the rules, using their identities, because the report, under normal circumstances, is a "get out of jail free" card.
The report will not protect you from deliberate violations of the rules, but if you accidentally or due to the safety issue involved had to break a rule, it will limit FAA's ability to punish you. As I recall, if there is an accident involved (defined by FAA terms), it's also not usable. You can use this protection once in five years, I think, but I'm not certain of the dates. (I've filed reports but never needed the protection.)
The identifying data is removed from the report before it goes into the database. The pilot gets a reciept with a number and date so he can invoke the protections.
You are spot on about feeling comfortable doing the reporting.
Slashdot Mirror
That seems to be the only place we don't agree.
Since the "popular vote" is not part of the system, and has no effect on the result of the system, it cannot be a check on the system. Exit polling is the same. If either differs from the actual result, at best we can ask "why", and the answers are simple. For the popular vote, the difference is because the people who designed the system explicitely wanted to even out the power amongst the states despite population differences. For polling, it's only a sample, largely self-selected, and nothing keeps a respondent from lying.
Now, you can use the difference to argue that the system should be changed, but that's some else. And maybe we actually agree, just you mean check in a different sense than I'm reading it.
Nobody but you has said that the individual state counts are meaningless. Since the STATE has chosen to define those numbers, they are hardly meaningless. OTH, there is no meaning to the "national popular vote", because it is used to determine absolutely nothing.
It's not in the Constitution, so why should we bother, right?
It is not in the US Constitution, but it may be in the state constitution, and is certainly in the state statutes.
How about we just flip coins or better yet sell the votes to the highest bidder.
I know you are being sarcastic, but there is nothing to prevent a state from using just such a system to decide electors. In fact, as some have mentioned, there is a move to sidestep the reasons for the Constitutional provisions and effectively bypass the electoral college by assigning a state's electors to the winner of the "popular vote". Why any state would want to yield what little power it has in the process is beyond me. How the voters in a state where candidate A wins by a landslide would put up with all the electors voting for B based on how the rest of the country votes is unimaginable.
Our voting system is severely broken.
I do not agree. It has worked for more than 200 years. It is more complicated than a simple majority vote because the founders designed it that way for good reasons. The fact that they don't teach those reasons in modern civics classes doesn't mean they don't exist.
In ANY case, the time to change the voting rules is before the election. It's too late today to get any real change before the next election.
To say that religious discussion at a University is unwelcome because scientific lectures are not welcome in church services is displaying both ignorance of the functions of both venues and intolerance.
Our local Uni regularly has theological discussions open to the public. It drives our local token athiest nuts, but at least people get to hear the ideas and judge for themselves.
Nah, it would just have the loser whining (and maybe suing) over how the numbers are rounded. And, except for the quantization noise, the result would be no different than a simple national popular vote, which the founders explicitely chose not to implement for reasons elsewhere described. And probably throw a lot more elections into the House when a simple majority doesn't occur.
No. That number has no meaning. It has even less meaning than counting the number of butterflies that you see outside your window each morning. It's like adding up the days of the week (rhis week is 13+14+15+16+17+18+19) and thinking the sum means somehing. It's a sham used by losers to complain.
I think this has been done since the first presidential election,
I think not, since the first elections were done while the people who designed the system were still around, and since there is no guarantee that there IS a state election to pick electors. IIRC, Missouri did not vote for electors until 1950 or so, but I can't put my finger on the link that shows it. In any case, the means of selecting electors is not specified by the Constitution, it's up to the states.
No, it is not a waste of time. Pointing out inconsistencies in the system can help improve the system.
The electoral college and lack of popular vote is not an incosistency of the system, it IS the system. Improving the system takes more than creating a meaningless tally and complaining that it has no meaning.
So it's not really a rampant problem but maybe there are still a few adjustments to be made.
I think the system works pretty well, even when the candidate I support loses. It is the system we have, and until it is changed, it should be followed. If it is unfair, the time to change it is before the election.
The Constitution defines how we elect the pres and VP. It says nothing about a nationwide popular vote. The STATES pick their allocated number of electors, and it is those electors who vote for specific people to be pres and VP. It is not even specified in the Constitution that the electors must vote for the people that the state picked them to. Some states don't even mandate that.
It is emotional hyperbole to pretend that someone is "screwed out" of winning a vote that doesn't exist. It makes no more sense to say that someone won the "popular vote" for US president than to claim that someone was elected president of north america because he got more votes for president of his country than others got to be president of theirs.
Whoever it was that started adding up the state-by-state vote counts and calling it the "popular vote" should be shot. Any school that teaches it should by decertified.
Not only is the "popular vote" undefined, it is not a true representation of popularity. People vote not just for who they prefer, but for who they think can win. If you prefer A over B and B over C, but you know that A cannot win, you'll probably vote for B to prevent C from winning. B's good showing in the "popular vote" is biased; no, rather A's low "popularity" is biased based on expected failure. A self-fulfilling prophecy. In any case, in the US, there IS NO popular vote, so wasting time talking about it is just wasting time.
My DVR tunes analog cable. It cannot do anything to change the channel on a DIGITAL cable set-top box (or an analog set-top box, either.)
More choice? Let's see.
Right now, I have 2 DVD-R's, 2 VCRs, a DVR/TV, and 5 TVs. With analog cable, I can automatically record 5 different channels and watch 5 others at the same time. More likely, when I am gone for a week or two, I can use the DVR as the main recorder and the others for other channels when the DVR is busy.
With a "convenient set-top box", I get one channel at a time. If I want to record a MythBusters, and that box isn't set to 'Discovery', I get something else. If I want to record Deadliest Catch while watching something else, ummm, no, I cannot. If I go away for a week and want to record the new Monks, Psychs, and LOCI, no problem (all USA). If I want the Atlantis and Flash too (Sci-Fi), sorry, cannot. Nobody will be home to change the channel on my convenient set-top box.
None of my 'TVs' are 40 years old. They all work just fine.
Comcast is, indeed, trying to force people into digital services, and I don't expect them to provide a single analog signal they aren't forced to, and even then I expect the quality of service will be about 30dB below what we get now. They pulled Oxygen and Hallmark and MSNBC a few weeks ago, and I actually had a Comcast driod telling me that I could do everything I'm doing now if I paid extra for the digital box. They also haven't bothered putting anything digital in those channels, even though "we can carry so much more in a digital channel" was the excuse for dropping them.
Yeah, you want to pay more for new things you want, but I got what I need. I don't need the all-or-nothing failure mode of digital, for one thing. A fuzzy analog signal is more watchable than no signal from digital.
What category should I use in eBay?
Async is used for devices like disks where you want to read a block but it doesn't really matter if the block doesn't come back right away.
Isochronous provides a fixed amount of bus bandwidth at fixed times, which is important if you are streaming audio or video.
Iso is guaranteed up to 80% of the bandwidth. Asynch is guaranteed at least 20%.
As for this "new standard" the story is talking about, no, it isn't new. 1394b has had S3200 defined for a long time. VERY long time. Nobody has implemented it. We needed it not for the bandwidth, but for the long-cable capabilities, and we've been waiting ... Fortunately, there are a couple of 1394b PHY (physical interface) chips on the market, and people are making 1394a-connectored long-cable hubs.
The 1394 standard is really interesting, including the hardware handshakes etc and bus topology maps you can use to know what is connected where.
It's the length in feet of a half-wave dipole antenna where f is frequency in MHz.
There are also questions about quarter-wave antennae, but I think most people can divide 468 by 2 and come up with the equation L=234/f, so memorizing one covers both.
The only other similar equation necessary is lamdba = 300/f, where lambda is wavelength in meters and f is frequency in MHz. This is for questions that deal with "what band is ..."
That's right, Morse is not relevant. At all. You don't need to know Morse code to get any level of amateur radio license. Whining about how difficult it is to learn Morse code as an excuse for not getting a license is OVER.
It's a 35 question MULTIPLE CHOICE test, out of which you need only 75% to pass. Many of the questions are common sense. Most of the rest require a small amount of memorization at best. You can get a complete list of all the possible questions, as well as all the correct answers, off the net.
The cost for the test varies from about $15 to free. (Yes, one VEC charges nothing for giving the test.) If you live anywhere near Dayton, OH, you can take your test one day and BE ON THE AIR the next. On Hamvention weekend, the VEC that does testing uploads the data themselves, so Friday testees know their callsigns on Saturday.
You can go from ignorant to licensed in a weekend, if you work at it. I know, because for the last three years our group has given weekend classes to people who have an interest but no background, with a test on Sunday afternoon, and we have a 100% pass percentage, with a large number of people getting 100% right.
E=IR. P=IE. L=486/f. That's about all the math you need.
And Blakey Rat, that wasn't directed at you 'cause you weren't the one whining, it was information for everyone.
What I want to know, is if Shrinky Dinks shrink when heated, why isn't fusing the toner to the Dink making it shrink? I mean, if you use the wrong transparency film in a laser printer, it MELTS and makes a horrible mess. Why aren't the Dinkys Shrinky?
Actually, the most popular toy technology for
That certainly would stop it from happening in the future. It would also drive companies right into the arms of Microsoft.
Which is easier for a corporate computer manufacturer PHB?
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Pay a licensing fee once to one company for all the software on a a system, and distribute nothing extra.
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Pay someone to develop code for specific hardware bits that needs to be version controlled so nobody ever gets sent the wrong code for their version of the hardware, and keep CDs on hand just in case someone asks for the software. Meanwhile, stay on top of all the copyright issues in all the jurisdictions where the product is sold and modify the distribution accordingly. (mp3 and gif, anyone?)
Option 1 is a lot simpler. If your target audience has no idea what Linux is, or even how to pronounce it, you can count on zero sales based on OS. You get Microsoft to discount the licenses because these are starter systems and every system sold today is a Microsoft user for the rest of his life. Your costs are about the same either way, and if you wind up a target for a copyright lawsuit over some tiny bit of code that you left in the distribution, the latter could cost a lot more.What is copy protection but broad-brush DRM? You cannot play your region 2 DVD in my region 1 player. You cannot copy your DVD to my (or your own) video tape. I cannot play my PC video game unless I have the original disk in the drive, even if all the code has been copied to my hard drive.
Fine-grained DRM gets to the level that I cannot play your mp3 on my player, or you cannot play your own mp3 on a different player than the one you bought it for.
It's still a limitation on using a piece of media for perfectly legal purposes.
I disagree. Common sense tells me that if the goal was to prevent serving more than a set number of terms or years, the authors would have written something talking about years or terms, and not about the number of times being elected to the office. Now, the goal of the people initiating the amendment might have been just what you say and perhaps a compromise was required to get the amendment passed. I can believe that. BUT, if a compromise was necessary, it is dishonest to then revert to the precompromise action once that amendment passed.
In many pieces of legislation, the goal of the author is often considered when the courts consider the law itself. "Didn't word it well enough" or "meant it to say" are perhaps valid concerns in that case. But when a deliberate compromise is required to get something to pass, the initial intent of the initial author should no longer be the guiding principle. He accepted the compromise, too.
Seeing as the SCOTUS overruled Florida's Supreme Court regarding the recount, I have to disagree with your assertion that they upheld the right of a state to enact their own laws regarding the selection of electors.
Just as SCOTUS is not authorized to change or create law, the SCOFLA is not authorized to change or create Florida law. SCOTUS said SCOFLA erred by overstepping their bounds in changing the Florida legislature's election law. The legislative branch is the ones who make the laws, and they are the ones who make the law setting deadlines for things. Thus, SCOTUS did, indeed, protect the legislative process in Florida, which is how Florida determines how its electors are chosen. The most SCOFLA can do is call the process unconstitutional and have the legislature start over, but that is not what SCOFLA did.
Further, as someone else pointed out, I think, equal protections means that everyone gets recounted, and not just the hand-picked few counties that might change the result. Of course, this was not a recount, but a re-recount. There is a limit to the number of times a recount should be allowed, given there are Constitutionally-written deadlines for completion of the process. Allowing lawsuits in one state that are aimed to prevent them from finishing in time also violates the equal protection clause, since that state's electors not being certified by the deadline means the voters in that state have NO say in the result.
There is no Presidential candidate involved. The hypothetical situation is a Democrat President (perhaps Hillary), a Democrat VP (perhaps Bill), and Republican Speaker of the House.
then the more conservative members of the court would vote in favor if him becoming president,
While that would be the EFFECT of their vote, their actual "votes" would be either the 22nd Amendment does or does not prohibit serving as President if the pathway to the office does not include being ELECTED as President. In other words, the coservative members would vote for a conservative interpretation of the Constitution, and the liberal members would seek guidance in the laws of other countries and ignore the explicit language of the Constitution they took an oath to support and defend.
Your statement echoes the mistake that many people make about the SCOTUS decision regarding Gore. They did NOT elect Bush, they did not vote FOR Bush, they upheld the right of a STATE to enact their own laws regarding the selection of electors. The Constitution is rather clear about that. If Gore didn't like the Florida laws about selecting electors, the right time to file suit was before they got in his way.
While the 12th Amendment says "But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States", the 22nd prohibits only the ELECTION to office, not serving therein. Nothing I see in the Constitution talks about eligibility to serve as President (other than natural born citizen and the age limit.) It is reasonable to assume that when the word "elected" is used, it is limited to that action, and that the 12th Amendment serves only to ensure that the citizen and age limits apply to the office of VP so that the VP can assume the role of Pres. if necessary. (There was nothing in the Constitution preventing someone for running for Pres. who was too young or not a natural born citizen, only that he could not serve. Apparently, he could serve as VP.)
If you thought the furor over SCOTUS stopping Gore's shenanigans trying to keep Florida's electors from being certified according to Florida's laws was something, just wait until SCOTUS has to rule on whether the 22nd A means one cannot SERVE despite clear terminology that the limit is "elected", and Bill gets passed over for a Republican speaker of the house when Hill steps down. I'd almost pay to watch that.
And then be elected as VP again, and become Pres. one day after the inauguration, which makes 14, and then be elected VP and promoted, making 18... that's how Bill's going to weasel his way back into office, as Hill's VP. Just watch.
I have no intention of defending this company for shutting off users who bought their product from an international dealer, because that is what "international" means. They can sell internationally.
However, your statement isn't in general true. There are, for many products, tariffs and import duties that make it more expensive to sell in certain markets, and likewise less expensive in others. I was once almost charged $25 per case for "camera cases" by an over-zealous customs agent because they were aluminum, and that is the import duty for "aluminum camera cases". It was an incredible hour out of my life, hearing that "cardboard" cases were duty free (so he wouldn't charge me duty on the boxes that the cameras themselves were shipped in). I finally got through to him that these were not "camera cases" as in "put my expensive Nikon camera in a carrying case", but "metal housings" for the OEM camera circuit boards that were in the same shipment. Sheesh.
Also, the distributor's costs in another country may be lower (lower wages for the wage slaves, etc.) so the distributor may mark the wholesale price up less.
And finally, the differing regulations regarding radio emissions (as one example) may make it much more costly to certify a piece of equipment in the US than in some other country, and the other country may get a slightly different, less expensive version of a product because it doesn't have to be as well shielded. Or it may have different/limited features due to differing laws.
Violating Regional Licensing or whatever cannot possibly "hurt" a company, if the company would lose money selling it in the US at $10 a copy, there is no way they are going to sell it for $10 a copy in Russia. At worst the company won't make as much profit as they want.
It would hurt the local distributor, who may have had to purchase in lots of 100 to get his discount, when an overseas dealer who signed a contract to sell only in Europe undercuts his price in the US. Or a foreign (to the US) dealer sells radio equipment that has different features, and the user expects the US repair facilities to be able to fix it when it breaks, under warranty. And in the latter case, the manufacturer may have legal issues even though his dealer is the one importing non-FCC type-accepted products.
I think the part of the equation that TdR misses is that the issue is not black and white.
If you are using virtualization to create multiple general-purpose servers, then perhaps your security is going to be worse than using individual hardware.
If you are using virtualization to provide quasi-independent special purpose servers on one hardware platform, I think his argument is not so correct.
I'm moving into virtualization to provide multiple limited-access special purpose servers on one piece of hardware that would be massive overkill were it to be the real host for any one of them. In my opinion, this increases security because:
- Almost nobody is allowed to log in but me. The biggest lack of security is the user.
- Almost nobody is allowed to log in but me. I don't need to care if someone needs a hole poked through the iptables for a VNC connection offsite, e.g..
- Each server runs one specialized service, which I can lock down without having to worry about what other things need access. And whatever hole that service has, isn't on any other server.
- I can create the first server, learn the specifics of that distro as far as security and access control, and clone it almost trivially once I have it locked down.
- Full, complete, bootable backup is trivial, which makes it more likely. That applies even to Windows systems where complete backups really aren't. I am less likely to try to clean up a hacked server because I know that restoring it to the last backup state is also trivial.
- In an environment where every ethernet line is switched, I can still monitor ALL traffic into and out of my virtual servers for intrusion detection.
- I can trivially remove any hacked server from the net while still having a virtual console to it.
- I can put operating systems that are closed source and poorly documented wrt open ports behind a NAT interface, so while it appears to the user (me) like it is on the net, it's a one-way connection and nobody from the outside can connect. (E.g., WinXP, NT, etc.)
I think the short version of that is that administration of ten virtual servers is much easier than ten physical servers, and as such, mistakes that allow compromises are less likely, and when they happen, cleanup is much easier.If that's true, then Amazon got a patent on creating invalid URLs.
How should I know? I'm not an entomologist. She's got money and she likes geeks. What else is there to worry about?
The report will not protect you from deliberate violations of the rules, but if you accidentally or due to the safety issue involved had to break a rule, it will limit FAA's ability to punish you. As I recall, if there is an accident involved (defined by FAA terms), it's also not usable. You can use this protection once in five years, I think, but I'm not certain of the dates. (I've filed reports but never needed the protection.)
The identifying data is removed from the report before it goes into the database. The pilot gets a reciept with a number and date so he can invoke the protections.
You are spot on about feeling comfortable doing the reporting.