AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps.
This is a good thing, it means we might eventually get the Green Lantern Corps.
My plan is to watch the Daily Show/Colbert Report live hour-long special, then either watch CNN or turn off the TV and just wait for results in the morning, as I wish most news outlets would do.
I will be browsing various sites through all this, but only a few of them will have ongoing political discussions, then there's Slashdot.
It sounds like you're setting yourself up for information overload. Dear heavens, why?
I found this pretty incredulous, too. This needs to be changed. Who can change it? Probably Congress. Will they change it? Ha! Half of them are (bipartisan) crooks; it's like asking them to give themselves a pay cut.
Personally, I think those who make (and/or enforce) the rules should be held to a higher standard of them. If a Senator gets pulled over and found guilty of some federal DUI law, s/he should spend twice as long in the slammer.
And any elected official who abuses his position for his own gain, be it accepting bribes like Mr. Tubes here, hiring/firing preferentially, or changing laws to support his/her own interest ("Well, let's lower property taxes for any houses worth more than $500K" "But Senator, your house is worth a million." "FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND, ALL IN FAVOR") should be charged with high treason. Actually getting someone convicted of such will likely be very hard, but it would be a very good noose to hang in their office to remind them to stay in line.
It will never happen in this democracy, of course, for the same reason that the felony issue won't change. However, hopefully these kinds of ideas get out and are heard by a group who makes a new democracy and puts that in.
Your photocopy or any other voter paper trail can be easily forged and, therefore, mean nothing.
True. However, it could be compared against the actual vote. (I don't know how long paper votes are held; hopefully a while. Nor do I know if you'd be able to match them, as voting is supposed to be anonymous.)
Some official could easily say "We never got those" or "They're lost, but trust us" and your point still holds.
I support well-done, transparent electronic ballots. It paves the way for voting-from-home, which would likely improve voter turnout as well as be convenient for most everyone. But if you're doing an absentee ballot, and want to make a copy, I say no one should deter you.
Pointless? Perhaps. But it's easy to do, and you never know when you'll need it.
While perhaps it was more of a parlor trick than a scientific hoax, The Turk was still peddled as a thinking machine that could play chess. Not only did its creator succeed, but subsequent owners did, as well.
The Turk or Automaton Chess Player was a chess-playing machine constructed in the late 18th century, and exhibited from 1770 for over 84 years, by various owners, as an automaton but later explained in January 1857 as an elaborate hoax.
...playing and defeating many challengers including statesmen such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin.
Really interesting stuff, well before any modern computer (even beating Charles Babbage's work by almost half a decade). In fact, Babbage was another opponent of the turk, and was reportedly inspired by it.
(If you're a CS major and don't know who Babbage is, you really should read up.)
In a large city or residential area, you're right; making a photocopy of your absentee ballot won't do you much good. But in a small town, it may speak volumes.
We'll use my town for an example. At the moment, I live in a rural, 500-person town in Iowa. The county itself has only a few thousand people (and three stoplights total). Both are heavily conservative (the stoplights have no preference), though I was surprised to see a few Obama signs in town and by farms.
So let's say that I vote for Obama, and so do six people I know I town. Election results come out, and it says that my town put in 0 votes for Obama. With my shiny photocopy, along with the photocopies of the six others, I can easily call and prove fraud in my town. With such a small county this may even work on that level. The county would likely go to McCain given a correct vote count, but fraud in one area likely indicates other fraud nearby.
This scenario is highly unlikely, but still a real possibility, so in this case it would make sense if I were to photocopy my absentee ballot (I plan on going to the polls, personally). It's 99% likely to do nothing, but if you have an all-in-one printer, what harm can it do?
I contend that either they are both funny or they are both redundant.
I will agree with you on people using moderation for "I like this person". I can't say for sure why it was modded such, but I might say that it's because your punchline is the exact same as the one Monroe made. Thus, you restated the original joke in a slightly different and more drawn-out manner, hence "redundant". You may be correct, and it may well be because of the/. Love Complex, but it could also be that first thing.
I would say that people modded mine funny because they find it funny. Perhaps you don't share the same humor as them, or are biased because you attempted a joke with the same material. I approached it in a different way than both yours and what Monroe originally implied, which is likely what others found funny. Yourself and Monroe imply that he lacks epic sex. I imply that he doesn't like staple guns. Different. But, obviously, I'm biased.
Therefore, while they both use the same source material, they arrive at different punchlines, and so do not have to share the same rating. And now that I've explained the joke, it's no longer funny. Tish-tosh.
(Please note that I'm not trying to be condescending, just merely explain why your conclusion is wrong.)
When EFF eventually wins (as I believe they will, even if it takes some time), the government will just give the telecom companies $700 Billion so they can use the money of taxpayers to pay off the taxpayers after the class-action lawsuits.
Isn't American politics fun? Circle of life or some bullshit.
As a general rule, any act that has a "cute" or "fancy" nickname is instantly a very bad one, passed only to increase one's chances of re-election or up the approval rating. They likely spend more time thinking of the bill's acronym rather than the actual bill.
This act is no different. "Ah, but what's KIDSP?" you ask. I wondered that myself, and then I saw it:
Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act of 2008 KIDS' Predators Act (Apostrophe mine)
Aw, how cute. I bet they spent an hour trying to figure out how to get the apostrophe in there.
Remember, folks: A->B does not mean that !A->!B. An act can still be bad without a nice acronym, but the congresscritters make it easier to spot bad bills by adding them in.
The problem with homeschooling is that public schools are not just the place for book smarts, but social smarts as well. While, admittedly, I can count the number of home-schooled kids I've met on my hands and toes, not one of them has been what I would consider "socially prepared".
I don't mean they have to like MTV and listen to the top Pop 40, but they don't react the same to various situations as other people, they don't understand certain social cues, nor do they get various social sayings. This is all to their detriment, especially when they mix with a group of like-minded peers still in school, as they get singled out and (almost always) made fun of for that.
So, while homeschooling can be a good thing when it allows a student to excel far beyond their level, it can also be a very bad thing. Anyone who homeschools their kids needs to make sure that their kid gets as much exposure to other kids as possible. So they learn to say "fuck", they'll be better off for it.
Some schools allow home-schooled kids to join in with extra-curricular activities; if the kid is worried about saying he's homeschooled, just have him say he's from another school that doesn't do this kind of stuff. If you have a rec-center, look into intramural sports. If you're in a farming community, try to get him in FFA or 4H. If they're a teen, try to get them to take a job that requires a lot of human involvement, such as a waiter or a cashier.
Homeschooling can be good, but just as social smarts without book smarts can be detrimental, so can the opposite. Think about taking your average nerd in high school, who already has little social contact, and then giving him none.
While I agree with you, the problem is that no elected official worth their salt would do something like that. It would cause as close to a riot as middle-class America would get.
So many people, even those without kids on the team or even kids period, put a huge amount of stock into "hometown spirit", and traditional football games play a huge part of that. I don't have the story at hand, but a year or two back two high school football players pulled a "prank" with a fake deer and caused a fellow student to get in a serious accident because of it (I don't recall if it was lethal or not). They got six months in juvie or something, and the judge delayed that so they could finish the football season.
It's ridiculous. Instead, the best method is probably to set up restrictions on the use of funds for sports programs (like schools must raise their own money to fund sports, or a max of X% of government funds can be used for sports) and then to dilute the sports as well. While football is a major American past-time, wrestling is fairly big at many schools as well, and is almost as prevalent in teen drama/shows as football is. Furthermore, wrestling actually provides real-life worth, as being able to pin someone if you get in a fight is a valuable talent.
So take that a step further and try to introduce and push sports that have applications off the field. Some form of Martial Arts would be good (many American kids would love to learn karate), and you'd not only have belts within school but sparring matches between schools. Offshooting wrestling, include boxing as well.
Some smaller sports could be like marksmanship (if the liberals start whining about teaching kids to use guns, we can switch to archery). We'd hang on to things like cross country, as they tend to have more useful purposes.
But because the general public has the *perception* that this is "the worst economic crisis since the depression" then something had to be done.
I don't disagree with your statements (I recall a phrase like "If it is believed, it will be"), but I don't think that's what happened here.
A few days ago, as reported by Slashdot, the White-house had to stymie the flow of e-mail from constituents due to the first bill. I would bet my bank account (all $20 of it) that the majority of those were negative about the bill.
Like much of the past four years, this is not something wanted by the people; it was by the fat cats on Wall Street and other parts of the financial industry. Any Republican that voted for this bill should be hung, as it goes completely against the idea of "small government" and free market. That so many voted against the bill raised my spirits this week (I'm fiscally conservative, socially liberal), but now they've gone and dashed them again, durn it all.
Financial Industry: "Daddy, I stabbed myself in the foot with a fork! I want a new foot!" Government: "Well, we can disinfect it and apply a bandage and it will heal over time. You'll learn your less" FI: "But I want a new foot NOW! Then I can stab it again later and it won't hurt as much, and I'll just ask for a new foot then." GV: "Well, alright. Would you like a new pony on the way back?"
It might just be frustration speaking, but I'd like to see Bush and most of his cabinet strung up on all sorts of charges the moment they step out of office. Will never happen, of course, but a man can dream.
To my knowledge, you can still snail mail, fax, and call them. My understanding is that you tend to get a better response/actually heard by using one of those methods over e-mail, which is far too easy to just delete.
Boo on the government for not setting up their hardware to expect something like this. But I don't think this counters the first amendment.
Of course, anyone who's visited woot.com when they're selling a Bag of Crap knows how suddenly a server can tank from "normal" use when any other day it's perfectly fine.
I can agree with their reason behind it, but not the execution. This is just like the "Everyone take off their shoes in case they're bombs" rule--it has a background, it has a "good" intent, but it's a horrible answer.
I know that many times in college, getting a very low grade early on struck a blow because I thought I might not be able to understand the rest of the material and pass. Even if everyone failed along with me, that wouldn't do much to perk me up. And often times the professor would state that there is a curve, but it's still a horrible one. A few times I just decided to withdraw rather than risk an F.
So I can get behind their idea that those who start failing early on will lose hope, and so need some sort of assurance to continue working. But auto-grading at 50% is a bad idea; how do you easily distinguish someone who tried but just doesn't get it and someone who didn't care and decided to just flake it? They both need help, but help of a different sort. This answer says "Well they should both just try harder".
Unfortunately, I don't know what a better solution might be. Many of my college classes had a policy for tests/quizzes where the lowest one would be dropped or the weights would change depending on how you did between them. Homework was graded normally. I think this works better-- they still get an accurate grade on assignments and so know what they have to work on, but it won't hurt them in the long run.
On another note, why the hell is this in Idle? Idle is for worthless shit and slashvertisements. This seems something better fit for Politics (maybe Science?). And what the hell is up with Idle's newline formatting?
Slashdot as a whole seems to have a pretty negative attitude towards eBay; if it's not their policies, it's their practices, or proposed practices.
So where are the alternatives? I don't do any online auction stuff, so I don't know of any, but I've rarely seen any +4/+5 posts with a competing auction site in them.
I propose that we, as Slashdot, list what we use (if any) as an alternative to eBay. Amazon? Craigslist? Something else? Then, when something is posted, people can swing their mod points around and up/down something based on their agreement (trying not to harm the user's karma, of course). Not quite the way the mod system is supposed to work, but useful.
While we're at it, alternatives to PayPal would be useful, as well.
Actually, has there been an Ask Slashdot on this? If not, perhaps it's time for one.
Perhaps I'm not fully understanding it, but I believe they don't have the ability to do on-the-spot translation. Instead, soldiers would likely go through a training regiment where they "think" commands, and the helmets are tuned for them personally while trying to get patterns as uniform as possible.
So when they think "Bravo Team Forward", the helmet recognizes the expected brain waves and translates it. When they think "I could use a mallomar bar and a hooker", the helmet ignores it. You'd get a lot of gibberish in the middle of battle, anyway.
My understanding is that both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been acting as independent, for-profit companies, which created part of the problem we have now.
I recall the power problems California had not existing until after the power companies were privatized, too.
Regardless, I believe that any utility or service that is basically required by the general populace and that uses public or government property should be maintained by the government and basic service offered to the public, while private companies can use these utilities to add extra services. This includes electricity, telephone, gas, and perhaps internet.
So perhaps they have a solution to the "out" part of coal plants. I won't argue if it's good or bad, I don't know enough about storing pressurized C02 underground to know what it could or could not do.
But it's my understanding that digging for coal is still a dangerous task that has a lot of its own perils, including environmental problems.
You could have a counter-ad. While Microsoft may have its holds in the public and corporate sectors, Linux is, to my knowledge, much preferred when it comes to science, computers, and math.
So do a parody ad, with lines like: "I'm a PC, and I'm curing cancer." "I'm a PC, and I'm trading stocks." "I'm a PC, and I'm advancing robotics." "I'm a PC, and I do special effects." "We're a PC, and we offer things for free." [insert Linux logo of choice here]
If you could somehow get that out there to the general public (Youtube push?) it might make a brief headway, but I doubt you'll ever change the notion that computer==Windows.
How many people do you know that call their computer a hard drive? Or think that the computer is the monitor? This stuff will come down gradually over time, but not until most of the last generation dies off.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a good thing, it means we might eventually get the Green Lantern Corps.
I had a CS class with a girl in it once. But then someone informed her that this wasn't Intro to American History, and she left.
My plan is to watch the Daily Show/Colbert Report live hour-long special, then either watch CNN or turn off the TV and just wait for results in the morning, as I wish most news outlets would do.
I will be browsing various sites through all this, but only a few of them will have ongoing political discussions, then there's Slashdot.
It sounds like you're setting yourself up for information overload. Dear heavens, why?
I found this pretty incredulous, too. This needs to be changed. Who can change it? Probably Congress. Will they change it? Ha! Half of them are (bipartisan) crooks; it's like asking them to give themselves a pay cut.
Personally, I think those who make (and/or enforce) the rules should be held to a higher standard of them. If a Senator gets pulled over and found guilty of some federal DUI law, s/he should spend twice as long in the slammer.
And any elected official who abuses his position for his own gain, be it accepting bribes like Mr. Tubes here, hiring/firing preferentially, or changing laws to support his/her own interest ("Well, let's lower property taxes for any houses worth more than $500K" "But Senator, your house is worth a million." "FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND, ALL IN FAVOR") should be charged with high treason. Actually getting someone convicted of such will likely be very hard, but it would be a very good noose to hang in their office to remind them to stay in line.
It will never happen in this democracy, of course, for the same reason that the felony issue won't change. However, hopefully these kinds of ideas get out and are heard by a group who makes a new democracy and puts that in.
True. However, it could be compared against the actual vote. (I don't know how long paper votes are held; hopefully a while. Nor do I know if you'd be able to match them, as voting is supposed to be anonymous.)
Some official could easily say "We never got those" or "They're lost, but trust us" and your point still holds.
I support well-done, transparent electronic ballots. It paves the way for voting-from-home, which would likely improve voter turnout as well as be convenient for most everyone. But if you're doing an absentee ballot, and want to make a copy, I say no one should deter you.
Pointless? Perhaps. But it's easy to do, and you never know when you'll need it.
While perhaps it was more of a parlor trick than a scientific hoax, The Turk was still peddled as a thinking machine that could play chess. Not only did its creator succeed, but subsequent owners did, as well.
Really interesting stuff, well before any modern computer (even beating Charles Babbage's work by almost half a decade). In fact, Babbage was another opponent of the turk, and was reportedly inspired by it.
(If you're a CS major and don't know who Babbage is, you really should read up.)
In a large city or residential area, you're right; making a photocopy of your absentee ballot won't do you much good. But in a small town, it may speak volumes.
We'll use my town for an example. At the moment, I live in a rural, 500-person town in Iowa. The county itself has only a few thousand people (and three stoplights total). Both are heavily conservative (the stoplights have no preference), though I was surprised to see a few Obama signs in town and by farms.
So let's say that I vote for Obama, and so do six people I know I town. Election results come out, and it says that my town put in 0 votes for Obama. With my shiny photocopy, along with the photocopies of the six others, I can easily call and prove fraud in my town. With such a small county this may even work on that level. The county would likely go to McCain given a correct vote count, but fraud in one area likely indicates other fraud nearby.
This scenario is highly unlikely, but still a real possibility, so in this case it would make sense if I were to photocopy my absentee ballot (I plan on going to the polls, personally). It's 99% likely to do nothing, but if you have an all-in-one printer, what harm can it do?
Why would I want a map of Canada?
Like why I had a dream last night where Dr. Gregory House chided me for not being able to beat an Iron Chef in only 24 hours.
I will agree with you on people using moderation for "I like this person". I can't say for sure why it was modded such, but I might say that it's because your punchline is the exact same as the one Monroe made. Thus, you restated the original joke in a slightly different and more drawn-out manner, hence "redundant". You may be correct, and it may well be because of the /. Love Complex, but it could also be that first thing.
I would say that people modded mine funny because they find it funny. Perhaps you don't share the same humor as them, or are biased because you attempted a joke with the same material. I approached it in a different way than both yours and what Monroe originally implied, which is likely what others found funny. Yourself and Monroe imply that he lacks epic sex. I imply that he doesn't like staple guns. Different. But, obviously, I'm biased.
Therefore, while they both use the same source material, they arrive at different punchlines, and so do not have to share the same rating. And now that I've explained the joke, it's no longer funny. Tish-tosh.
(Please note that I'm not trying to be condescending, just merely explain why your conclusion is wrong.)
I take it Monroe doesn't like staple guns.
When EFF eventually wins (as I believe they will, even if it takes some time), the government will just give the telecom companies $700 Billion so they can use the money of taxpayers to pay off the taxpayers after the class-action lawsuits.
Isn't American politics fun? Circle of life or some bullshit.
As a general rule, any act that has a "cute" or "fancy" nickname is instantly a very bad one, passed only to increase one's chances of re-election or up the approval rating. They likely spend more time thinking of the bill's acronym rather than the actual bill.
This act is no different. "Ah, but what's KIDSP?" you ask. I wondered that myself, and then I saw it:
Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act of 2008
KIDS' Predators Act (Apostrophe mine)
Aw, how cute. I bet they spent an hour trying to figure out how to get the apostrophe in there.
Remember, folks: A->B does not mean that !A->!B. An act can still be bad without a nice acronym, but the congresscritters make it easier to spot bad bills by adding them in.
The problem with homeschooling is that public schools are not just the place for book smarts, but social smarts as well. While, admittedly, I can count the number of home-schooled kids I've met on my hands and toes, not one of them has been what I would consider "socially prepared".
I don't mean they have to like MTV and listen to the top Pop 40, but they don't react the same to various situations as other people, they don't understand certain social cues, nor do they get various social sayings. This is all to their detriment, especially when they mix with a group of like-minded peers still in school, as they get singled out and (almost always) made fun of for that.
So, while homeschooling can be a good thing when it allows a student to excel far beyond their level, it can also be a very bad thing. Anyone who homeschools their kids needs to make sure that their kid gets as much exposure to other kids as possible. So they learn to say "fuck", they'll be better off for it.
Some schools allow home-schooled kids to join in with extra-curricular activities; if the kid is worried about saying he's homeschooled, just have him say he's from another school that doesn't do this kind of stuff. If you have a rec-center, look into intramural sports. If you're in a farming community, try to get him in FFA or 4H. If they're a teen, try to get them to take a job that requires a lot of human involvement, such as a waiter or a cashier.
Homeschooling can be good, but just as social smarts without book smarts can be detrimental, so can the opposite. Think about taking your average nerd in high school, who already has little social contact, and then giving him none.
While I agree with you, the problem is that no elected official worth their salt would do something like that. It would cause as close to a riot as middle-class America would get.
So many people, even those without kids on the team or even kids period, put a huge amount of stock into "hometown spirit", and traditional football games play a huge part of that. I don't have the story at hand, but a year or two back two high school football players pulled a "prank" with a fake deer and caused a fellow student to get in a serious accident because of it (I don't recall if it was lethal or not). They got six months in juvie or something, and the judge delayed that so they could finish the football season.
It's ridiculous. Instead, the best method is probably to set up restrictions on the use of funds for sports programs (like schools must raise their own money to fund sports, or a max of X% of government funds can be used for sports) and then to dilute the sports as well. While football is a major American past-time, wrestling is fairly big at many schools as well, and is almost as prevalent in teen drama/shows as football is. Furthermore, wrestling actually provides real-life worth, as being able to pin someone if you get in a fight is a valuable talent.
So take that a step further and try to introduce and push sports that have applications off the field. Some form of Martial Arts would be good (many American kids would love to learn karate), and you'd not only have belts within school but sparring matches between schools. Offshooting wrestling, include boxing as well.
Some smaller sports could be like marksmanship (if the liberals start whining about teaching kids to use guns, we can switch to archery). We'd hang on to things like cross country, as they tend to have more useful purposes.
To Jeffrey Kaplan: What's it like being a proverbial drug lord?
Warcrack, indeed.
I don't disagree with your statements (I recall a phrase like "If it is believed, it will be"), but I don't think that's what happened here.
A few days ago, as reported by Slashdot, the White-house had to stymie the flow of e-mail from constituents due to the first bill. I would bet my bank account (all $20 of it) that the majority of those were negative about the bill.
Like much of the past four years, this is not something wanted by the people; it was by the fat cats on Wall Street and other parts of the financial industry. Any Republican that voted for this bill should be hung, as it goes completely against the idea of "small government" and free market. That so many voted against the bill raised my spirits this week (I'm fiscally conservative, socially liberal), but now they've gone and dashed them again, durn it all.
Financial Industry: "Daddy, I stabbed myself in the foot with a fork! I want a new foot!"
Government: "Well, we can disinfect it and apply a bandage and it will heal over time. You'll learn your less"
FI: "But I want a new foot NOW! Then I can stab it again later and it won't hurt as much, and I'll just ask for a new foot then."
GV: "Well, alright. Would you like a new pony on the way back?"
It might just be frustration speaking, but I'd like to see Bush and most of his cabinet strung up on all sorts of charges the moment they step out of office. Will never happen, of course, but a man can dream.
To my knowledge, you can still snail mail, fax, and call them. My understanding is that you tend to get a better response/actually heard by using one of those methods over e-mail, which is far too easy to just delete.
Boo on the government for not setting up their hardware to expect something like this. But I don't think this counters the first amendment.
Of course, anyone who's visited woot.com when they're selling a Bag of Crap knows how suddenly a server can tank from "normal" use when any other day it's perfectly fine.
I can agree with their reason behind it, but not the execution. This is just like the "Everyone take off their shoes in case they're bombs" rule--it has a background, it has a "good" intent, but it's a horrible answer.
I know that many times in college, getting a very low grade early on struck a blow because I thought I might not be able to understand the rest of the material and pass. Even if everyone failed along with me, that wouldn't do much to perk me up. And often times the professor would state that there is a curve, but it's still a horrible one. A few times I just decided to withdraw rather than risk an F.
So I can get behind their idea that those who start failing early on will lose hope, and so need some sort of assurance to continue working. But auto-grading at 50% is a bad idea; how do you easily distinguish someone who tried but just doesn't get it and someone who didn't care and decided to just flake it? They both need help, but help of a different sort. This answer says "Well they should both just try harder".
Unfortunately, I don't know what a better solution might be. Many of my college classes had a policy for tests/quizzes where the lowest one would be dropped or the weights would change depending on how you did between them. Homework was graded normally. I think this works better-- they still get an accurate grade on assignments and so know what they have to work on, but it won't hurt them in the long run.
On another note, why the hell is this in Idle? Idle is for worthless shit and slashvertisements. This seems something better fit for Politics (maybe Science?). And what the hell is up with Idle's newline formatting?
Slashdot as a whole seems to have a pretty negative attitude towards eBay; if it's not their policies, it's their practices, or proposed practices.
So where are the alternatives? I don't do any online auction stuff, so I don't know of any, but I've rarely seen any +4/+5 posts with a competing auction site in them.
I propose that we, as Slashdot, list what we use (if any) as an alternative to eBay. Amazon? Craigslist? Something else? Then, when something is posted, people can swing their mod points around and up/down something based on their agreement (trying not to harm the user's karma, of course). Not quite the way the mod system is supposed to work, but useful.
While we're at it, alternatives to PayPal would be useful, as well.
Actually, has there been an Ask Slashdot on this? If not, perhaps it's time for one.
Perhaps I'm not fully understanding it, but I believe they don't have the ability to do on-the-spot translation. Instead, soldiers would likely go through a training regiment where they "think" commands, and the helmets are tuned for them personally while trying to get patterns as uniform as possible.
So when they think "Bravo Team Forward", the helmet recognizes the expected brain waves and translates it. When they think "I could use a mallomar bar and a hooker", the helmet ignores it. You'd get a lot of gibberish in the middle of battle, anyway.
My understanding is that both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been acting as independent, for-profit companies, which created part of the problem we have now.
I recall the power problems California had not existing until after the power companies were privatized, too.
Regardless, I believe that any utility or service that is basically required by the general populace and that uses public or government property should be maintained by the government and basic service offered to the public, while private companies can use these utilities to add extra services. This includes electricity, telephone, gas, and perhaps internet.
So perhaps they have a solution to the "out" part of coal plants. I won't argue if it's good or bad, I don't know enough about storing pressurized C02 underground to know what it could or could not do.
But it's my understanding that digging for coal is still a dangerous task that has a lot of its own perils, including environmental problems.
So where's the solution for that?
It becomes a government utility, just like it should be.
You could have a counter-ad. While Microsoft may have its holds in the public and corporate sectors, Linux is, to my knowledge, much preferred when it comes to science, computers, and math.
So do a parody ad, with lines like:
"I'm a PC, and I'm curing cancer."
"I'm a PC, and I'm trading stocks."
"I'm a PC, and I'm advancing robotics."
"I'm a PC, and I do special effects."
"We're a PC, and we offer things for free."
[insert Linux logo of choice here]
If you could somehow get that out there to the general public (Youtube push?) it might make a brief headway, but I doubt you'll ever change the notion that computer==Windows.
How many people do you know that call their computer a hard drive? Or think that the computer is the monitor? This stuff will come down gradually over time, but not until most of the last generation dies off.