How could this thing possibly be cost effective? The stylist at your favorite hair place does the same job for not a very big salary, and he/she can do a lot of other stuff too. I can't help but think these things are mostly publicity stunts, although there's presumably some valuable experience to be gained in solving hard (for robots) problems.
If you, and others with similar posts, would RTFA you'd see the technology is aimed at hospitals and nursing homes and such, where adequate staffing is always a problem.
Actually, adequate staffing isn't really the problem... there are more than enough capable people to handle the work. What has happened (at least in the U.S.) is that most of those facilities have been bought out by big companies who run them for profit, solely for profit, at the expense of both the caregivers and the patients. It's insane: a decent nursing home will run you a sixty to a hundred grand a year. And what do you get for that? One RN on duty (if you're lucky), a few overworked CNAs and a room. All the hype your read about skilled nursing facilities is just that: hype. Staff levels and quality have been cut to the minimum in recent years. What usually happens is that (often at night) a resident of one of these places has an accident, and the reason they had that accident is because there were two or three CNAs on a floor with fifty or sixty residents. Then the families get involved, lawsuits are filed, maybe there's an out-of-court settlement, and more staff is hired. Then, over time, the staff levels are cut back until the next "accident" happens. It's a sick system, and I want absolutely no part of it.
I've known a number of people over the years who just took some of their assets, bought a two-bedroom condominium (the second room for their caregiver) and retired there. With the money they save from living in a regular nursing home they can hire full-time caregivers dedicated just to them, they have control over the people who are taking care of them, and generally end up in a much better situation. They get to leave more of their assets to the children when they die, and now instead of spending everything on a bloodsucking nursing home, they are building up some equity.
It didn't used to be this way, but a lot has changed in the past couple of decades. Frankly, if these robots can be used improve a resident's quality of life, I'd say go for it. The problem is, the homes will never go for it: they're all about money, most of them (there are good ones, but they're rare) and are unlikely to make the investment.
I think the bigger question would be why would anybody want this in the first place? Is the girl that does your hair at the local place REALLY costing you so much you'd think of replacing her with a bot?
It's more about boring jobs than cost, IMHO. Why should humans do boring jobs when there's a robot for it?
Your philosophy is one that James P. Hogan espoused in Voyage from Yesteryear: "If a machine can do it, why should a human have to do it?"
Well, there are many reasons. Some people simply aren't intellectually capable of anything more than a boring job. Others simply have no aspirations for anything more than a boring job, especially if that job offers them some security. That is becoming more and more true, as the global economy tanks and people are forced to lower their expectations.
Not everyone in the world is interested in excitement, novelty, or the next cool thing. Many just want to put in their eight hours in a tolerable job and then go home to their families. And you know what? There's nothing wrong with that, and in fact, if it weren't for those people you wouldn't have all those cool things to play with. Civilization isn't built solely by people that do exciting things: it's built and maintained by people that do all the millions of routine stuff that keeps the lights on, the clean water flowing from your faucet, and food on the shelves.
"It seems to me that what will happen is that the main driver of increasing the market share will be new computers with Windows 7 pre-installs"
It's a shame that more people don't just build their own computers and save money, rather than buying a pre-built with pre-installed garbage (software and such, that is). As for Windows 7, there's simply no groundbreaking reason(s) for people to upgrade.
I agree. 7 does some nice things, but if you have a system that is doing what you want and doing it well, there really isn't any compelling reason to upgrade. There just isn't.
Still, you'll never get people to build their own: that's just not a part of their skillset. However, I look back at the early days of personal computing (mid-to-late seventies and onward) where there were small computer shops all over. You could walk in, have somebody slap a system together for you, shoot the breeze with them, ask questions from someone who knew more than just how to plug the damn thing in... those days are long gone. The big chains came in and undercut the local shops and put them out of business. That actually presaged much of what happened later to the U.S. economy and local businesses in general. The thing is, what people didn't realize was that while those shops charged a little more, they also provided lots of free support and training. I know, I worked in a few of them back in the day. We even offered formal training classes in the evening for a very reasonable price: easy money, and the class was always full.
Contrast that to your typical Big Box Mart nowadays. Yes, you get something passing for a PC for a few hundred bucks but, unless you happen to know a friendly geek-type who will help you out with it you're on your own. Something was lost when all those little homegrown computer stores disappeared, and it was this: support. You're not going to get anything significant in that regard from a store that's selling machines for a minimum margin, that hires low-wage teenagers, throws them in a uniform and calls them "experienced PC technicians."
Just as an aside, I had a Geek Squad van driven by a couple of those teenagers literally run me off the road because he was in a hurry and trying to pass me in the merge lane. When I honked at them, the driver immediately slammed on his brakes and both he and the passenger stuck their hands out their respective windows and flipped me off. I immediately took down their license plate number and called the "How am I driving" number on the back of the truck. Just the kind of responsible citizens that I would want working on my personal computer.
Seriously. I already figured that a lot of people still used XP and whats with the "Almost one year after" part. Was it a slow news day?
There are plenty of people still using Windows 98. The Slashdot crowd represents large numbers of people that use their systems for more than word processing and basic Internet functionality ("yeah, I run OSX in a VM under Linux".) All of us here enjoy learning new things, trying out new features and capabilities, and that's because, at the core, we're geeks. Heck, to us, the novelty of some new aspect of our favorite OS is fun.That's not true in the real world, where the bulk of users have systems that are already way faster than they will ever, ever need and to whom familiarity is more important than some arbitrary set of features. They finally figured out how to make their computer do those things that they want it to do, and simply do not care about anything else. Matter of fact, they consider being forced to upgrade as an entirely unreasonable proposition, and will fight it.
Okay, I'll make a car analogy. Those of us who learned to drive, learned it once. We don't have to re-learn it every time a new generation of automobiles comes out, and in fact we'd be torqued into pretzels if we were forced to do so. Yet, for a lot of people who look at computers as just another appliance like their car or their refrigerator, they only want to learn how to use it once. Asking ordinary people to repeat what was, to them, a difficult experience just because they bought a new appliance (e.g., a new personal computer) is going to cause trouble. In the case of Microsoft Windows, I cannot say that they're necessarily wrong in feeling that way, considering how much of Microsoft's business model revolves around changing things just to sell more copies.
I have friends that had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into Windows 2000 because "the icons were all different", and I can't face the thought of trying to get them to go to Window XP, much less Windows 7. Just not worth the effort, for them or me. It's easier to just keep scrounging old parts from my junkbox (which I haven't cleaned out in ten years for just this reason) than to try and convince them to "upgrade". Eventually that won't be possible and they're going to have to go out and buy a new system with whatever OS is the latest and greatest. Now, frankly I don't want to be around when that happens. It's going to be thermonuclear, and I don't want to find myself an incised shadow on the wall.
When I posted, he was modded Informative, hence my confusion.
Yeah... I know. I finally figured out that it's best not to take some random moderator's word for a poster's intent. Especially right after a posting: it takes a while for the moderation system to get it right. And, of course, sometimes it simply fails miserably. I've had +5 Funny mods when I was trying to be serious, and -5 Troll mods when I was just trying to crack a joke. Sometimes, just for the heck of it, I will Troll a little, and half the time I get +5 Insightfuls. Go figure.
If you had enough power, I have to wonder if some kind of expert system could be applied to the task of moderation. It's all about determining the relevant context and intent of a communication, something AI has never really been very good at. Still, it would entertaining to have two values generated for each post: one by the AI, and another by human moderators.
Source? I've never heard this, and couldn't find anything. Furthermore, there'd be gazillions of prior art and/or obviousness cases. Unless you're talking about some sort of streaming transmission mechanism, which I did find a patent for (which doesn't seem to apply in this case).
Actually, I think he was streaming humor, and got modded Troll for it.
Next on our todo is wrapping up the 4-dvd box release, NTSC/PAL discs with extras and documentary, and 2 DVD-ROMs with tutorials, and all the data to reproduce the fim entirely.
American's only abide by their treaties when its convenient and profitable for them to do so.
Nice generalization there. What usually happens is that we refuse to become signatories to treaties that have no benefit to us, regardless of (ahem) "world opinion" on the matter. That is our right, and in fact we have honored treaties that cost us a great deal: the first Gulf War for example.
Regardless of whether or not you believe that Iran's signing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treat has any merit or any validity, they are current signatories. Period. End of statement. They also have the option of backing out of that treaty at any time: no-one is preventing them from doing just that. But they won't: they want the benefits of being on board without any of the responsibilities. Even the U.N. is pissed at them for that.
Good defense =/= good offence. To secure the goverment network you need thousands of IT pros, maybe even tens of thousands, while an attack like stuxnet only needs a small team of highly competent people. which of those two seems easier?
Well, you're correct of course... but all that means is that anyone on the planet could be responsible.
And also because I don't want tv shows/movies/news LOCKED UP behind a paywall (where you have to subscribe to Comcast or ATTT Wireless to gain access to the programming).
And they're going after torrent sites with ACTA, it seems (if I'm interpreting the MPAA's recent query about using ACTA to shut down Wikileaks correctly.) Does anyone else besides me and the Commodore see a pattern developing here?
I really dont see how this is going to do much of anything at all.....most servers are not in the US they are overseas already.
I hear that claim bandied about a lot, but given the amount of raw connectivity that the United States has, I suspect it isn't really true. Wishful thinking, really. Sites that expect they may have problems with U.S. laws, well, sure... but "most servers"? I doubt that. And what do you qualify as a server? Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and AOL alone account for an incredible number of servers in vast datacenters, and most of those are located in the U.S. (although all of those companies do have substantial infrastructure elsewhere.)
You also have to make a distinction between ISPs and hosting companies. Granted, sometimes they're one and the same. Requiring Web hosts to deactivate specific servers on demand is pretty worthless, I agree, and for the reason you state: they can just move overseas somewhere. Furthermore, if the domain is still active the site could be back up in minutes if an overseas backup server was prepared in advance. But if the intent is to prevent Web users from accessing undesirable sites, a better approach would simply require all U.S. ISPs to block all sites on a government-provided blacklist. It won't matter then if a site is up or not: everybody's provider will block access to the domain. Of course, it's a small step from that to requiring ISPs to use a government-approved whitelist. Don't think there aren't certain people just salivating over that prospect.
By the time the dust settles, the United States Federal Government, the very entity which brought forth the worldwide wonderfulness of the Internet itself, is perfectly capable of ruining the whole thing, at least for those of us in the U.S.
Where to, that's the question. I want good food and fast broadband. Cool smartphones would be a plus.
Denmark: 20/1 for 45$/month, 50/5 for 90$. An N900 for 700$, Android phones at similar prices. You can get cheap phones with 6-month shackles or expensive phones with cheap subscriptions and no shackles. Mobile internet for 10$/month (1/.5, capped at 1 GB).
Oh, we can buy milk that's milked within 24 hours at our groceries.
That's very true. They should find the guys running the USPS and put them in charge of the entire Federal government; they'd certainly do a much better job than the current morons (or any of the morons who have been running it for the past decade).
You'll have to go further back than that, I'm afraid. Really, they've always been morons (Congress has been corrupt since its inception.) But because the pre-World War II Federal Government was tiny compared to its current state, they couldn't so much damage. Now, heh, they've become expert pickpockets, fleecing the American taxpayer and, indeed, much of the world.
Ultimately, you can lay the blame for this at Hitler's feet. Germany and its erstwhile ally Japan forced America to get involved in a big way. That, of course, meant increased taxes and bigger government. That was all supposed to go away after the war was over, but realistically, how often do politicians willingly give up more power and a massive revenue stream?
Palin 2012! Maybe the Maya predicted the end of the "American" world/empire?
Hardly. "It's just not California... the whole world is going to shit!" Hey, I've seen the movie, I know how it goes down.
Besides, why pick on us? The rest of the world sucks at picking leaders too, and considering that America is only a couple hundred years old, the rest of you have sucked far longer.
Besids, Obama is inflicting more damage right now that Sarah Palin could ever do. He's actually intelligent... the makes him a lot more dangerous.
The USPS gets no subsidies; it survives entirely on its own.
Which, when you think about it, is remarkable for a government (especially a United States Federal Government) bureaucracy of such size and complexity.
Slashdot Mirror
How could this thing possibly be cost effective? The stylist at your favorite hair place does the same job for not a very big salary, and he/she can do a lot of other stuff too. I can't help but think these things are mostly publicity stunts, although there's presumably some valuable experience to be gained in solving hard (for robots) problems.
If you, and others with similar posts, would RTFA you'd see the technology is aimed at hospitals and nursing homes and such, where adequate staffing is always a problem.
Actually, adequate staffing isn't really the problem ... there are more than enough capable people to handle the work. What has happened (at least in the U.S.) is that most of those facilities have been bought out by big companies who run them for profit, solely for profit, at the expense of both the caregivers and the patients. It's insane: a decent nursing home will run you a sixty to a hundred grand a year. And what do you get for that? One RN on duty (if you're lucky), a few overworked CNAs and a room. All the hype your read about skilled nursing facilities is just that: hype. Staff levels and quality have been cut to the minimum in recent years. What usually happens is that (often at night) a resident of one of these places has an accident, and the reason they had that accident is because there were two or three CNAs on a floor with fifty or sixty residents. Then the families get involved, lawsuits are filed, maybe there's an out-of-court settlement, and more staff is hired. Then, over time, the staff levels are cut back until the next "accident" happens. It's a sick system, and I want absolutely no part of it.
I've known a number of people over the years who just took some of their assets, bought a two-bedroom condominium (the second room for their caregiver) and retired there. With the money they save from living in a regular nursing home they can hire full-time caregivers dedicated just to them, they have control over the people who are taking care of them, and generally end up in a much better situation. They get to leave more of their assets to the children when they die, and now instead of spending everything on a bloodsucking nursing home, they are building up some equity.
It didn't used to be this way, but a lot has changed in the past couple of decades. Frankly, if these robots can be used improve a resident's quality of life, I'd say go for it. The problem is, the homes will never go for it: they're all about money, most of them (there are good ones, but they're rare) and are unlikely to make the investment.
I think the bigger question would be why would anybody want this in the first place? Is the girl that does your hair at the local place REALLY costing you so much you'd think of replacing her with a bot?
It's more about boring jobs than cost, IMHO. Why should humans do boring jobs when there's a robot for it?
Your philosophy is one that James P. Hogan espoused in Voyage from Yesteryear: "If a machine can do it, why should a human have to do it?"
Well, there are many reasons. Some people simply aren't intellectually capable of anything more than a boring job. Others simply have no aspirations for anything more than a boring job, especially if that job offers them some security. That is becoming more and more true, as the global economy tanks and people are forced to lower their expectations.
Not everyone in the world is interested in excitement, novelty, or the next cool thing. Many just want to put in their eight hours in a tolerable job and then go home to their families. And you know what? There's nothing wrong with that, and in fact, if it weren't for those people you wouldn't have all those cool things to play with. Civilization isn't built solely by people that do exciting things: it's built and maintained by people that do all the millions of routine stuff that keeps the lights on, the clean water flowing from your faucet, and food on the shelves.
The first time one of them removes a cranium, it's all over for Panasonic.
Or as Duke Nukem would probably put it: It'll rip your head off and shit down your throat.
"It seems to me that what will happen is that the main driver of increasing the market share will be new computers with Windows 7 pre-installs"
It's a shame that more people don't just build their own computers and save money, rather than buying a pre-built with pre-installed garbage (software and such, that is). As for Windows 7, there's simply no groundbreaking reason(s) for people to upgrade.
I agree. 7 does some nice things, but if you have a system that is doing what you want and doing it well, there really isn't any compelling reason to upgrade. There just isn't.
... those days are long gone. The big chains came in and undercut the local shops and put them out of business. That actually presaged much of what happened later to the U.S. economy and local businesses in general. The thing is, what people didn't realize was that while those shops charged a little more, they also provided lots of free support and training. I know, I worked in a few of them back in the day. We even offered formal training classes in the evening for a very reasonable price: easy money, and the class was always full.
Still, you'll never get people to build their own: that's just not a part of their skillset. However, I look back at the early days of personal computing (mid-to-late seventies and onward) where there were small computer shops all over. You could walk in, have somebody slap a system together for you, shoot the breeze with them, ask questions from someone who knew more than just how to plug the damn thing in
Contrast that to your typical Big Box Mart nowadays. Yes, you get something passing for a PC for a few hundred bucks but, unless you happen to know a friendly geek-type who will help you out with it you're on your own. Something was lost when all those little homegrown computer stores disappeared, and it was this: support. You're not going to get anything significant in that regard from a store that's selling machines for a minimum margin, that hires low-wage teenagers, throws them in a uniform and calls them "experienced PC technicians."
Just as an aside, I had a Geek Squad van driven by a couple of those teenagers literally run me off the road because he was in a hurry and trying to pass me in the merge lane. When I honked at them, the driver immediately slammed on his brakes and both he and the passenger stuck their hands out their respective windows and flipped me off. I immediately took down their license plate number and called the "How am I driving" number on the back of the truck. Just the kind of responsible citizens that I would want working on my personal computer.
Vista and 7 have substantially reduced their market.
I'll buy that. Of course, pretty much any Unix-derivative running a decent desktop will reduce that attack surface even further.
Seriously. I already figured that a lot of people still used XP and whats with the "Almost one year after" part. Was it a slow news day?
There are plenty of people still using Windows 98. The Slashdot crowd represents large numbers of people that use their systems for more than word processing and basic Internet functionality ("yeah, I run OSX in a VM under Linux".) All of us here enjoy learning new things, trying out new features and capabilities, and that's because, at the core, we're geeks. Heck, to us, the novelty of some new aspect of our favorite OS is fun.That's not true in the real world, where the bulk of users have systems that are already way faster than they will ever, ever need and to whom familiarity is more important than some arbitrary set of features. They finally figured out how to make their computer do those things that they want it to do, and simply do not care about anything else. Matter of fact, they consider being forced to upgrade as an entirely unreasonable proposition, and will fight it.
Okay, I'll make a car analogy. Those of us who learned to drive, learned it once. We don't have to re-learn it every time a new generation of automobiles comes out, and in fact we'd be torqued into pretzels if we were forced to do so. Yet, for a lot of people who look at computers as just another appliance like their car or their refrigerator, they only want to learn how to use it once. Asking ordinary people to repeat what was, to them, a difficult experience just because they bought a new appliance (e.g., a new personal computer) is going to cause trouble. In the case of Microsoft Windows, I cannot say that they're necessarily wrong in feeling that way, considering how much of Microsoft's business model revolves around changing things just to sell more copies.
I have friends that had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into Windows 2000 because "the icons were all different", and I can't face the thought of trying to get them to go to Window XP, much less Windows 7. Just not worth the effort, for them or me. It's easier to just keep scrounging old parts from my junkbox (which I haven't cleaned out in ten years for just this reason) than to try and convince them to "upgrade". Eventually that won't be possible and they're going to have to go out and buy a new system with whatever OS is the latest and greatest. Now, frankly I don't want to be around when that happens. It's going to be thermonuclear, and I don't want to find myself an incised shadow on the wall.
And when they duplicate your software, they do take the original too.
S'okay. I have an offsite backup.
When I posted, he was modded Informative, hence my confusion.
Yeah ... I know. I finally figured out that it's best not to take some random moderator's word for a poster's intent. Especially right after a posting: it takes a while for the moderation system to get it right. And, of course, sometimes it simply fails miserably. I've had +5 Funny mods when I was trying to be serious, and -5 Troll mods when I was just trying to crack a joke. Sometimes, just for the heck of it, I will Troll a little, and half the time I get +5 Insightfuls. Go figure.
If you had enough power, I have to wonder if some kind of expert system could be applied to the task of moderation. It's all about determining the relevant context and intent of a communication, something AI has never really been very good at. Still, it would entertaining to have two values generated for each post: one by the AI, and another by human moderators.
Source? I've never heard this, and couldn't find anything. Furthermore, there'd be gazillions of prior art and/or obviousness cases. Unless you're talking about some sort of streaming transmission mechanism, which I did find a patent for (which doesn't seem to apply in this case).
Actually, I think he was streaming humor, and got modded Troll for it.
Holy crap!
Yes. But here's the real "holy crap!" part:
Next on our todo is wrapping up the 4-dvd box release, NTSC/PAL discs with extras and documentary, and 2 DVD-ROMs with tutorials, and all the data to reproduce the fim entirely.
Those carbon-heavy logs will burn great in my fireplace.
American's only abide by their treaties when its convenient and profitable for them to do so.
Nice generalization there. What usually happens is that we refuse to become signatories to treaties that have no benefit to us, regardless of (ahem) "world opinion" on the matter. That is our right, and in fact we have honored treaties that cost us a great deal: the first Gulf War for example.
Regardless of whether or not you believe that Iran's signing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treat has any merit or any validity, they are current signatories. Period. End of statement. They also have the option of backing out of that treaty at any time: no-one is preventing them from doing just that. But they won't: they want the benefits of being on board without any of the responsibilities. Even the U.N. is pissed at them for that.
If one party has giant pile of nukes, and the other doesn't, why *should* the treaty be balanced?
Why *shouldn't* the party that doesn't have a giant pile of nukes want to balance it?
Why *should* the party that does have a giant pile of nukes let them?
Good defense =/= good offence. To secure the goverment network you need thousands of IT pros, maybe even tens of thousands, while an attack like stuxnet only needs a small team of highly competent people. which of those two seems easier?
Well, you're correct of course ... but all that means is that anyone on the planet could be responsible.
Thank you for the laugh. Was the Princess Bride reference intentional?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093779/quotes
This being Slashdot, I can pretty much guarantee that it was. And it was perfectly executed.
Oh, your quite wrong, unless you by fail mean stopped being an empire.
You didn't actually read my post, did you.
Moreover, the same strategy can then coax those cells to morph into specific tissues that would be a perfect match for transplantation into patients.
I think he misspelled "patents".
P.S.
And also because I don't want tv shows/movies/news LOCKED UP behind a paywall (where you have to subscribe to Comcast or ATTT Wireless to gain access to the programming).
And they're going after torrent sites with ACTA, it seems (if I'm interpreting the MPAA's recent query about using ACTA to shut down Wikileaks correctly.) Does anyone else besides me and the Commodore see a pattern developing here?
I really dont see how this is going to do much of anything at all.....most servers are not in the US they are overseas already.
I hear that claim bandied about a lot, but given the amount of raw connectivity that the United States has, I suspect it isn't really true. Wishful thinking, really. Sites that expect they may have problems with U.S. laws, well, sure ... but "most servers"? I doubt that. And what do you qualify as a server? Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and AOL alone account for an incredible number of servers in vast datacenters, and most of those are located in the U.S. (although all of those companies do have substantial infrastructure elsewhere.)
You also have to make a distinction between ISPs and hosting companies. Granted, sometimes they're one and the same. Requiring Web hosts to deactivate specific servers on demand is pretty worthless, I agree, and for the reason you state: they can just move overseas somewhere. Furthermore, if the domain is still active the site could be back up in minutes if an overseas backup server was prepared in advance. But if the intent is to prevent Web users from accessing undesirable sites, a better approach would simply require all U.S. ISPs to block all sites on a government-provided blacklist. It won't matter then if a site is up or not: everybody's provider will block access to the domain. Of course, it's a small step from that to requiring ISPs to use a government-approved whitelist. Don't think there aren't certain people just salivating over that prospect.
By the time the dust settles, the United States Federal Government, the very entity which brought forth the worldwide wonderfulness of the Internet itself, is perfectly capable of ruining the whole thing, at least for those of us in the U.S.
No, I did not RTFA.
Hopefully unemployment here, and in the South will send a clear message at the next election.
You're assuming they care enough to listen.
Where to, that's the question. I want good food and fast broadband. Cool smartphones would be a plus.
Denmark: 20/1 for 45$/month, 50/5 for 90$. An N900 for 700$, Android phones at similar prices. You can get cheap phones with 6-month shackles or expensive phones with cheap subscriptions and no shackles. Mobile internet for 10$/month (1/.5, capped at 1 GB).
Oh, we can buy milk that's milked within 24 hours at our groceries.
You had me up to the milk part. I hate milk.
That's very true. They should find the guys running the USPS and put them in charge of the entire Federal government; they'd certainly do a much better job than the current morons (or any of the morons who have been running it for the past decade).
You'll have to go further back than that, I'm afraid. Really, they've always been morons (Congress has been corrupt since its inception.) But because the pre-World War II Federal Government was tiny compared to its current state, they couldn't so much damage. Now, heh, they've become expert pickpockets, fleecing the American taxpayer and, indeed, much of the world.
Ultimately, you can lay the blame for this at Hitler's feet. Germany and its erstwhile ally Japan forced America to get involved in a big way. That, of course, meant increased taxes and bigger government. That was all supposed to go away after the war was over, but realistically, how often do politicians willingly give up more power and a massive revenue stream?
Palin 2012! Maybe the Maya predicted the end of the "American" world/empire?
Hardly. "It's just not California ... the whole world is going to shit!" Hey, I've seen the movie, I know how it goes down.
... the makes him a lot more dangerous.
Besides, why pick on us? The rest of the world sucks at picking leaders too, and considering that America is only a couple hundred years old, the rest of you have sucked far longer.
Besids, Obama is inflicting more damage right now that Sarah Palin could ever do. He's actually intelligent
The USPS gets no subsidies; it survives entirely on its own.
Which, when you think about it, is remarkable for a government (especially a United States Federal Government) bureaucracy of such size and complexity.
http://www.livablestreets.com/streetswiki/vauban-freiburg-germany [livablestreets.com] Vauban has only bicycles and a tram.
What about wheelchairs and Segways?