As to mexico, their castillian "elite" are some of the more classic and vile racists on the planet. Their exploitation of indian and mestizos is well documented, as are their abuses in the military, the federales, and in "business" in general. Major high level drug production and smuggling is just one of their crimes, and a lot of that effects the US tangentially in parallel with our for-profit scam drug "wars". Mexico's failed political and economic model based on graft and bureaucracy over the past 80 years or so have caused their problems more than any other single factor. Mexico is a nation rich in natural resources including abundant fossil energy, two great oceans with seaports, vast good agricultural land and a willing and enthusiastic workforce, yet they still struggle economically. 10% of their population has emigrated, primarily to the US, because their globalist two class society rulers in government and business are-racist lamers. Goons. All they are doing with the connivance of our high level goons is exporting their "revolutionary" potential, it's a sort of defusing of the situation so they can continue their scams and corruption and stay in power.
It is perfectly acceptable to "notice" this and as US person, who appreciates the basic concepts of right and wrong and good and evil to consider this "wrong". And it's also acceptable to consider destroying our existing middle class to be a "not" good idea in an attempt to fix this situation. There are better ways to go about this, and to be humane about it, certainly better than the path we have been set on by our so called "leaders". For an extremely simplified gist, it's possible for BOTH nations to create more jobs without resorting to huge population moves or destroying numbers of existing jobs. It doesn't have to be one or the other.
Personally, if forced to choose between the two, I would much rather go to war against the mexican organized government criminal cartel than with iraq, they are a bigger long range and immediate threat, IMO. But that's a totally different topic for another time. There's a variety of reasons, but not right now.
Don't worry, you'll "get it" when it's your turn on the unemployment dole, and when that runs out, to take one of the upcoming government "New Deal part two" work force project jobs.
And no, that isn't far fetched as all. It's coming, get used to the idea, you and I have been sold out. The US has millions of people who thought their skills (blue and white collar, across the board)and job were sorta kinda secure, and they weren't. There's millions more independents who are having a harder and harder time finding shorter work contracts that pay less and less. And even more millions who bought into the stock market because "they knew what they were doing" and believe "everyone can be a winner" in the stock market casino and parroting globalism and "free trade" as some sort of automagical economic panacea. Whoops, that got drove home the past few years for 90%+ of the "investors". All this and more is happening, very, very quickly.
And yes, plenty of individual exceptions,and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt you don't "fit" any of those above categories-yet- but in general terms, I am correct, as it isn't opinion, it's just noting empirical data.
One reply for AC. You are welcome for the comments.
"mass equivalence" hmm that means photons are almost the same as that stuff that was laying on the plate on thursdays back at my old junior high. It was a meat-like equivalent.
--I did read the article and a lot of other articles on the subject. Your assumption is incorrect. I also don't own or even am considering owning an xbox, nor do I ever play video games, so there's another assumption you got wrong. I am not personally trying to crack the key, another assumption wrong. I don't use drugs, so your assumption on crack is incorrect.
And you are also wrong on the other notions, political and legal or quasi legal pressure is being put on modchip makers, "cracking" encrypted software and reverse engineering closed source is still a serious gray area and several suits past and present exist. EULAS on software are a self written get out of jail free card non-warranty on propietary software manufacturers end (I've read those too), and really don't exist outside that industry.
As to car modding, of course I am aware of that as pertains warranties. But no car company puts legal or political or economic pressure on the aftermarket and racing guys for doing their business, on the contrary, they gleefully snag and put to good use any advances they can find. They are more than willing to lend their trademarks and logos to them to slap on their cars at the track. Engineers are employed in the automakers stable, extremly skilled out of the box thinking and HIGH PAID engineers exist in the aftermatket and modification areas. NASCAR and NHRA innovations have added about as much to detroit's bottom line over the years as the sum total of their in house engineers. The price is right for detroit,and they aren't as plain vanilla stupid as the software houses or hollywood. They can and have learned from their mistakes in the past, but those other guys just keep making the same ones over and over again and go running to bigbrodotgov nanny.
A lot of intelligent people in those industries, but a severe lack of common sense sometimes at the upper management levels. Must go with the mindset I guess, don't know why, but there ya go.
You get one reply as an AC from me, so here it is.
--"protectionism IS selfish, as in "I sort of prefer keeping my income and job and home and making sure my immediate family and nieghbors and country keep theirs as well". And the deal is there's nothing wrong with this. Nothing at all. It is the nature of a marketplace to seek a profit-even an individual profit. It's also the nature of a "marketplace" to band together to "protect" itself from an "attack" from outside, be it economic or physical. You can be protective WITHOUT being predatory, and therein I think is where the confusion arises.
I own a home, I help to protect my home by firmly locking the door when I leave. I have the option of answering the door when someone knocks on it, or I can ignore the knock. That is my right and option. If I think in my judgement opening the door at that particular time is a "good idea", then I am free to do so. I hear a knock, there's a girl scout selling cookies. No probs, it's a "good deal" to me, I am happy with the trade. On the other hand I hear a knock and I see someone I don't wish to speak to-for any reason-it is my right to not answer the door and talk or do business. I am "protecting" myself based on my evolving analysis of "life".
There comes a time you have to make decisions on what is important not only for yourself personally, but for your family, your neighbors and neighborhood, and your nation as a whole. The US is now in a spiraling-->down deficit in economics and in good quality jobs(yes it's headed that dirtection), in diverse vertical manufacturing and agriculture and in informational technology, both hardware and software. We used to be great at that stuff, but now we seek others to do the work, but for short term profits for *some folks* here.
I am of the opinion that we would be more advised to "protect" these industries over the long haul rather then to trade them off for short term profits in the near term. That doesn't mean we can't trade, and it also doesn't mean we should just give away the store so that 1% of our population can get fabulously wealthier, and the other 99% enjoy cheaper stuff for a few years then go broke and out of work. What happens in the other nations is not completely our business, nor should it be. We can be friends, ewe can trade, but we aren't required to just give it away. We as a nation went through that development phase long ago, it just isn't our fault to ensure that rapid change takes place "over there" at our expense. We can pick and choose on it, and by and large we are a generous people. the world is changing though, and swiftly.
Anyone has to ask themselves, if a large nation basically gives away(sells off cheap) it's manufacturing base, then gives away (sells off cheap) it's informational services base, and gives away (sells off cheap) it's food production base..uhhh..what's left? Really, what's left?
If you follow our trends over the past two decades, then extrapolate them to any sort of logical conclusion, you will see that this "future" if followed as being done now would result in the US as primarily a two class society with WARFARE as it's only profit making export.
Think on it, see if that is correct. Take away eventually all the normal jobs the US middle class has, what is left over?
Now, ask yourself, you REALLY want to see that? If all we in the US have left for work in this nation is manufacturing weapons, manufacturing prisons, and that's it,throw in bread and circuses crap like hollywood and pro sports and videogames for grins, well, what do you think we'll be doing for a living here? Big hint-you won't like it.
I already don't like it and I live here. My momma didn't raise no son who couldn't learn from history.
"Protecting" my nation from that fate is a *good deal*. "Protecting" anyone else's "your" nation from that you should consider as an even "better" deal.
---outsourcing wouldn't happen (near as much) if corporations weren't given tax breaks up front to move offshore, and if the US leaders cared as much for their citizens as other nations care for theirs and instituted a little sane protectionism tariffs to protect still viable good industries in the US. "Programming" is not "buggywhip manufacturing" as critics like to say about protectionism in general. The root word "protect" is neither a swear word nor a word of derision, although some people seem to think it is. Perhaps a more unified programming/IT guild would have more political clout as an organization rather than as a collection of a million + individuals whom have little clout *as* individuals. There's a reason why coordinated organizations work better than groups of random individuals, else we wouldn't see organizations in any field or endeavor. At least agreeing on the basic premise that "jobs are good, let's keep them" would be hard to argue against.
--unemployed guy driving by walmart, knowing all this stuff is cheap and on sale. He thinks to himself, "uh huh, big deal, doesn't mean as much as it did when I still had a job".
--this is an interesting case. I am reluctant to use the old cars and computers analogy, but it's appropriate here. For decades and generations car companies have come up with innovations and released a product that they own, then sell. It has shape, size, presence, features, etc all unique to that comapny, and covered by various laws of ownership and some laws on use, but still a lot of leeway. And for the same amount of time guys have decided that these products needed "souping up" and customiizing and modifying, and it's all been mostly legal. You can take a car, moidify it heavily and still drive on the public road following a set of road use laws, but you can still drive completely different if you want to on your own property or someone elses property-say a race track-in any manner you wish to. They did it for their own reasons which aren't revelant, make it go faster, make it travel on roads not envisioned as the primary road the designers were aiming for (think heavy off road mods), make it look nicer or whatever.
Seems like more than ample past case law to make hardware modding "legal". In the cars cases it might have required the hotrodder to completely disassemble the entire car, see how every single part worked and how it was designed, then decide how they wanted to do it better or different to suit their needs. It's more than legal, it's commonplace and no one thinks twice about it, it's a huge business and millions of people do it as a hobby.
Microsoft is seeking to become a huge exception to the past rules, as are a slew of other computer hardware and software companies. They can't have it both ways, if they actually are selling a product, then said product must be covered by a consumer warranty, and last I looked microsoft insists their products are as-is, no warranty unless they deem to do allow it at their leisure, ie, the "designed software" and "hard coded into the hardware" part. It's one or the other, if they want all the rights of a sellable consumer product, then they must accept normal useability warranties that are applied to every other "product" out there, and they most definetly DON'T accept that, so the courts should tell them (and ALL those other companies that insist on propietary excuslivity "rights" to their warez) to get stuffed until they do. As to modding the hardware itself, it's the same, either you get to OWN a piece of stuff or you don't, you can't half own something. Case precedence should have been set a long time ago, but it wasn't, now it's a big ole mess because it's become entrenched into computer-dom that they can have their cake and eat it too, something no other product has, and only one private business in the US currently enjoys (outside utilities and that gets into what is a utility), and that's major league baseball, which is goofy enough but exists.
--there are two issues here, one is fraud with the letter, the other one is "what is a domain?".
There's been several good analogies in the thread, here's mine: Domains are "more similar" to a government allowed frequency monopoly that the FCC grants to a broadcaster. Broadcaster pays x amount of money per year for this license, and also must follow a set of rules. In this case switch FCC as a governmental agency to a private company that has similar powers "subcontracted" to them. We do this now in a big way inside the US in the prison system, a lot of them are privately owned and run (wackenhut for instance). I don't like that, but it's current reality,a very important public governmental *thing* being subbed out to a private definetly for-profit concern can lead to a lot abuses, IMO.
Where it is different is that there isn't any total exclusivity to this particular subcontractor,although they are *very big and very known and quite well used*, all they have going for them is inertia and size, as other forms of registration exist-albeit small and not used much-and it's international in scope, just not within a single state or nation.
The FCC can "grant" a license to someone to broadcast on such and such freq, outside their jurisdiction in another nation that doesn't mean a thing, and two signals can and frequently are on the same freq, or pointing at a similar place to follow the analogy. Happens all the time in radio. There's various international *almost-rules* but in fact there is no absolute enforcement short of warfare.
here's another way to look at it
The basic reality is, although it *appears* to be a property rights issue as to the word address represented as the domain "name", the "rights" involved don't actually exist because the REAL property itself doesn't exist, only the temporarily placed digital SIGN that POINTS TO where a temporarily installed digitial numeric address exists, and it's quite possible to have any number of signs, all saying different things, that will point to the same address.
If it was REAL property you could own it forever if you chose to, like a trademark, car, or house. It would be unique, and "yours".
The IP number and actual computer where the content is hosted, and any copyrighted content served therein and from is the real "property" in the classic sense of property, the sign giving directions to it is just an advertising and direction finding convenience and a separate thing, although still a "sort-of" property,it isn't absolute in any sense, it can never be "owned" forever, therefore isn't property in any other sense compared to any other sort of property in past historical common law.
These signs-pointing-to the real property have varying levels of advertising effectiveness in attracting "travelers" on the road that are looking for addresses to stop at. In that case the signs themselves are a separate piece of "sort of property" from the IP address and content served, and the people who build and set out the signs-the domain registrars-own all of them as if you don't pay them off you lose it, so you never "own" them as property, you temporarily lease them with limited rights. And you can still put your own signs out and use other sign companies if you want to, just one has currently more advertising impact.
So there's two pieces of property-so now you have to ask which is more valuable and who actually owns each piece of property. The website creator and host sort out with themselves who owns what over there, but any "word" domain name you can't ever, ever "own" unless you "do it yourself" with your own domain server, and it still can't stop anyone from doing it themselves and copying the same wording and pointing at their property, so it gets down to who has a better advertising company and who will use your advertising directions over some other fellow's constructs. Both are legal in other words, no one over the other in toto is possible, although currently it is more highly probable that one will get used a lot more than the other.
Now how you contract that with another sign pointing company because you realise doing it yourself isn't real effective and you want to go with the current entrenched "bigdog" in the sign pointing business is a variable, if you choose to keep renting their advertising signs that give directions to your 'real' property that you can own forever that's an easier issue. In that case you have a tort action if they fail to fulfill their side of the contract, so that part to me seems like a slam dunk for the website originator and whomever paid the loot first to the sign pointing company that stuck the signs out. That's really easy to see. In this particular case the sign pointing company screwed up because they were lamers and didn't verify who was who effectively,so they should lose in the first case, BUT, they themselves have a civil tort-potential against the letter sender, who also may suffer an additional criminal action if the state (and feds actually) chooses to prosecute.
Law gets easier to understand if you first sort out the differences between dealing in "real property" and "commerce" and tangibles you can own forever and temporary intangibles.
--a synthetic thread that didn't absorb water might work like that, but the problem would be you'd need so many of them attached (glued?) to the upper glass collection plate that they would block the sunlight infra rad heat from hitting the water to be distilled in the bottom of the solar collection box. You want as much "open" space as possible so the heat gets transferred to the water so it will evaporate. Catch 22 then. When the distiller is operating, as the water heats up from the hot sun hitting it, first you get a 'fog" on the inside of the glass, just like on your windshield in cold weather. Next you can see the individual droplets getting bigger and bigger, until the weight of the single drops overcomes the surface tension/adhesion on the glass, and the slight angle of the glass allows the drops to "break free" and flow downhill until they come up against a stop and then drip straight down into the collection trough, which is itself at a sight angle to where it exits the box into a short collection tube going to whatever container you have. That's the simple design and it worked well until that dang "too sticky" problem started getting bad. It worked really, really well the first year too, automatic, low tech, lotsa distilled water from some pretty hard well water.
Thanks for the input, yourself and the other poster, helps to have different ideas thrown at problems sometimes, I got some more to think about now. One would be a variation on the threads idea, not for the delivery but for the propogation of liquid water into "humidity", something that would keep the same size box I have but increase the surface area of the water so it evaporated faster at a lower temp. A mass "wicking" action on the bottom of the box itself, some sort of fibrous spongy mat perhaps. Hmmmm and hmmmmm Between that and an external coil condenser it could up the output without having to deal with the "sticky glass" syndrome. hmmmm
..to be fair to the guy he described what he was up against "as is". I ain't he, but would wager he and his company are up against the current shaky and mostly stagnant economy, and the decision from higher-higher is probably something along the lines of "make what we got work as long as possible". Hmm, for that matter bet he ain't alone, similar is probably being ordered by the PHBs all over corporate-land.
kinda like picard uttering "make it so" to some *almost* unsolvable problem, heh
--it's a very shallow box, so it would require hundreds of smaller cones then some sort of feed delivery system from the apex drip point of each cone. The steep angles would help of course, just no way to do it practically with the existing rig. A rippled glass might work better then a flat pane, but the cost for such a pane would be high I would wager. Deep single cones, put over holes in the ground, are an emergency solar distiller that work. I have made those, just loose plastic larger than the hole diameter, drop a marble in the center and it will fall until the plastic sheet is tight to make a "cone". You place a collection can down in the bottom. It's "enough" with a three foot across hole and putting a lot of torn off vegetation in the hole tomake around a quart a day in hot weather. What we are after is a daily steady supply of some gallons. Most likely I will first try the ultra buffing/polishing, and if that doesn't work go to a very large narrow diameter coil of hose where the moisture laden hot air, pumped by it's own heat outside the box, has enough surface area in the coil for cooling and condensation.
the filtration would be neat if it was possible cheaply, reverse osmosis would do it, but that is some specialised expensive equipment that takes electricity. The deal with having the distilled is you want as pure as water for "topping off" as possible, as any minerals introduced in the storage batteries will stick to the lead plates, reducing their effectiveness. That's one of the quickest ways to ruin any lead acid battery, using normal tap water in them, or hard well water. Now filtered rainwater works about as good as distilled, as rain is just distilled water condensed around a dust or soot particle, but there again, getting the mud out is the problem. I could dedicate one high end water filter to it, but as I only have two, daily use for one and one carefully packed away as reserve, I'd rather just do distilled.
Solar "stuff" is a lot of fun to play with, as well as practical-WHEN it works! hahaha! I will say the PV's are just a joy, day after day, nice clean power.
---hmm, didn't think of buffing it, thanks for the tip! It's a pain to get to the inside glass, it's permanently glued down with caulk, have to cut it off then re apply the caulk each time-another lame design feature. The good thing is I didn't buy it, the folks I work for did. If I don't make a solar water heater out of the box, I might try building a door for the glass on a hinge with some sort of permanent gasket, then try some more cleaning techniques, including the buffing. We washed it carefully before, used paper towels, crumpled newspaper, and lint free cloth, truly annoying to not have it "work" again after those efforts. Seems like the vinegar should have removed the calcium/mineral deposits though, but it obviously didn't. It's a perfectly good theory, actually evaporates the water quickly once the sun starts hitting it, just the collection part is dismal. Anyway, it's winter now, wouldn't work all that good when it's so cold out, next spring I'l mess with it again. I *might* try exhausting the moisture laden air and just using a huge coil of hose as the cooling mechanism leading to the collection container, then not worry about collecting it inside the box. Tipping it slightly so that a normal thermosiphon effect would come into play would probably work, ie, "heat doth rise".
Had to refill one bank of batts yesterday, it wasn't too bad, 24 T-105 Trojan 6 volters took around 6 gallons to top them off to the correct levels. I had a large food grade plastic drum I was trying to fill up before winter with the solar distilled water, that was "the plan" anyway, too bad I have to waste juice now to make the water. Oh well...
--I'd like that community wireless deal as well, but how do you connect to the backbone? At some point there is a hard wired connection in this picture that costs serious moolah and takes advanced expertise. How can joe average actually "get" a real internet access without going through an ISP? Even if someone else does it and you leech off their wireless, it is still costing that someone else a lot of money. there's no "individual" internet access that is commonly used or avaialable, it all has an immediate middleman involved, whether dial up or dsl or cable. I'd like to do that right now-connect to the net and bypass the ISP- but, no idea how to do it without becoming an ISP myself and purchasing some expensive pipe, and accumulating the "howto's".
---media advertisers don't have a direct way to see who's watching the ads, but they sure as heck have an indirect way, and that's if the advertising *works* or not. Ads that work and sell widgets keep getting run as widgets keep getting sold. It's a multi zillion a year industry that's been up and running for generations now, so it must be "true facts". It's kinda like spam, they use mass scale to be effective,and repetition. x-million of people see a tv advertisement, a much smaller number buy the product. On the internet it's different because there's a much smaller number of people seeing the content as compared to the cost of providing the content. Add in "stripping" the ads, the big companies will come up with what you are seeing-legislation to "crack down" on sharers as the first step.
Personally I have never seen a comparison. although vcr's and copying over the air or cable shows has been around for awhile now, there hasn't been any huge explosion of people "sharing" vcr tapes, not anything numbers-wise like the "sharing" of stuff you see on the internet. the people who produce the content are not going to stop their efforts until they get paid for as many single "viewings" as they can come up with, practically speaking, and I wouldn't put it past them to go so far as trying to do huge numbers of arrests and fines (via court orders) in order to drive home the point, that and getting people kicked off their isps for sharing-either "just" leeching or full sharing. I don't expect them to give up, nor do I expect the countermeasures to cease, I just think they will most likely "win" once joe average starts getting busted and fined all over. Right now only the huge sharers (by bandwith) and outright mass production-for - profit copiers are getting busted and harassed, but as soon as it gets to 'anyone', file sharing will slow down tremendously. It won't stop, but it'll slow down significantly.
It's the golden rule in action, them's that gots the gold makes the rules,and it's always been that way.
quottage "We certainly dont want the internet to become modeled after the cable tv media structure."
I think this is exactly what is going to happen to "the internet". It's going to follow both cable/satellite type services, and be combined with telco style charges. You'll be buying various "package deals" to content along with your net access. There will evolve several large internet providers. People say it'll never happen, but I predict it will because there's no practical way to get to the backbone without going through the isp. There's the chokepoint, and there's where the interface and payment plans will be collected. The trends in the industry now will be to watch bandwith, provide pay per view on demand, and that will require centralised services as having it for thousands of providers will become too cumbersome for the payments. The wild wild west days of the internet are soon to change dramatically. I don't want it to change, but the money is going to come from someplace because "the internet" is running at a loss if you deduct the guhzillions of venture capitalist input,which is drying up. Copyright issues, "security" and bandwith will lead the business model.
--we use solar PV here, and have three battery banks. Needing a lot of distilled water every month, we got a commercial solar distiller, which is mounted down by the panel arrays. It's roughly a 3 foot by 5 foot box with a glass top that is sealed to the sides. It worked pretty good for around a year,2-3 gallons a day output, then it stopped working, the glass developed some recurring film that stops the drips from falling into the collection tray. We tried adjusting the angle, etc, opened it up, cleaned the glass several times-nada. It evaporates water great,that part works as advertised, then the water that collects on the glass just sits there until the weight of the droplet causes it to fall right back into the pool of water, instead of sliding down the incline. So we switched to an electric distiller for now, next summer I'm going to make a hot water heater out of the thing and design and build my own distiller. The glass cleaning deal really stumped us, we tried vinegar, windex, you name it, that glass is spotless clean, but within a day or two it gets dirty enough to stop working-just unacceptable. There's probably some sort of application chemical like rain-x or something to use but it's a hassle to keep doing that, it should "just work" for at least a month without having to open it up for additional cleaning. I imagine on a bigger scale it would actually work better as you could have extremely steep sides for the collection efforts.
There's a neat deal that was invented, it uses rotating sails to collect moisture from the air, some places in south america are using it now. this was covered on slashdot before earlier this summer, here's a generic link to a page of links about fog collection. cool stuff.
----as a linux noob I can say I would love to see that feature. I keep a small console open but mostly I don't use it yet, and being able to see what's happening all the time would help (me at least) make the jump.
--volunteer at an abused woman's and children's shelter, and only do tutoring with other adults present. It's also a good place to haul over your old computer and donate it. I would imagine the officials there will run a background check on you first, but that is understandable.
--in these days of terrorism, this watch could give someone an immediate headsup to evac any area that has become dangerous from perhaps a "dirty" radiological device or just from some *insane goon* spreading radioactivity in some manner. Maybe well before any "official" word of an attack is released on the radio, etc. And after an attack it would be useful for noting hotspots and relatively "cleaner" areas to avoid or travel in. Too bad it's so expensive I would get one to add to my survival/preparedness supplies.
--the bls stats are quite complex and can be interpreted several ways. They have a lot of different breakdowns as to seasonal and non seasonal and race and age and you want it you got it. My basic gestalt in my post was that it's still a guess in large part. I think the numbers are lowballed tremendously. People not actively seeking work can mean a lot, sometimes seeking work is not an offical way to seek work so it's not counted. An example, someone who has tried to use their personal contacts in various ways, querying friends who might be working at some plant, they get told "don't bother, they aren't hiring and laid off some more folks" won't bother applying, so because they didn't officially go there and fill out a form they are counted as "not seeking work". things of that nature skew the stats. It really doesn't matter to people so long term unemployed they have lost almost all hope of getting anything.
We also have the phenomena of people who perhaps just a few years ago had income level A from a single job now having to work multiple jobs and many more hours to approach what they had gotten to before.
This is really a complex subject that is hard to cover in casual posts on the internet. And obviously some geographical areas are better than others,some industries are better than others, but I would feel confident stating that the "job" outlook in the US now has gone downhill extremely fast the past few years, VERY broadly speaking. And it compounds, that one lost job and income gets spread around in the local area immediately as that person has dropped normal consumerism, they are buying "less" and perhaps not even being able to cover their bills, thereby reducing others income, which leads them to spend less, and etc. It's almost exponential in nature.
On the tech side, I've seen several topics/threads here where you can readily see a lot of problems even with people with a decade or more good IT experience and work history having extremely difficult times finding more work. On the blue collar side it's "worse than that" most places.
Anecdotals are just that, but I've seen this on several forums, this topic comes up a lot, quite a bit more than it did in the 90's for instance, and it goes beyond "dotcom bubble". One large forum I visited-a broad cross section across the US and across various white and blue collar industries-had an informal poll that showed as high as 1/3 of the respondents out of work or severely underemployed compared to a few years ago. I know that isn't scientific at all, but still... I've also seen this personally, just locally here, an example, I know of a few guys locally been in construction trades for decades,older guys with families, etc, regular old solid folks, worked steady all their lives, lately they are having to travel over 200 miles roundtrip a day to find any sort of work, even a one week minor job. They are just plain scared that even that is going to poof. Technically they show up as "employed" but it is quite tenuous.
I look at other sorts of informal "indicators", the one that really shows me the labor market is going downhill is the used car lots. Couple of years ago there was a variety of cars, older barely running things to sorta new. A regular normal mix especially in price range. Now the lots (around here at least) are full of practically new vehicles, and all the banks have repos for sale parked out front. The new vehicle dealers are practically dragging people off the street to get them to buy. The pawn shops are full to bursting. Yard sales on the weekends have increased several hundred percent in the past couple of years. Homes for sale have gone up tremendously, the ad level in the paper has just exploded, and I am in what is considered to be a pretty decent area as far as my state is concerned. And the help wanted section has dropped to literally print editions of spam-work from home on puter and make millions, sell avon, etc, with very few "real" jobs being advertised.
"Bottom line" is that the economy is suffering on several fronts now, rising un and under employment being just one of them. And it's really not hyperbole or exaggeration to those 780,000 people who just got their very last source of income, it's stark reality in their face.
--totally agree with you on the energy side being a major factor in successful industrialization. One of the reasons I am convinced the 21st century will be the era of the "resource wars" primarily over oil, fresh water, and arable land that doesn't require massive irrigation to be productive. I am quite pessimistic over this. I think that some smaller wars coming up have a very good chance of getting to a "major" level because of population pressures and demand for just *more* of everything and oil still being so necessary.
Here's a clue to the tax problem in california, they could try controlling their borders better, allow lawful citizens to live and work there, kick out illegal criminals. Also stop being a clueless nanny state in the legislature. Might save a few bucks that way. Just a thought.
--hey man, I grew up in michigan and I went to the kelloggs plant too! Schooltrip-cereal=neat! We also went to some meat plant I forget the name of now, tried a buncha sausages out. Kids like museums and zoos, but they like to EAT too! heh heh heh When I was a teenager we used to sneak over to zug island in the detroit river at night. Kinda like a real life sci fi doom end of the world city of the future. I guess a working steel mill or a foundry would be a good addition to the guys industry tour. And a working mine if you can find one. I remember going by some mine, think it was lima ohio, had this WHOPPER piece of equipment there, a dragline maybe, just humongous.
--I agree somewhat, there's a lot of redundancy, but then again, CDs are cheap, it's really not much if any more costly to include a lot of apps, it only takes a bit more time to install, or you have a choice up front to only install a limited set or even a very limited set by choosing custom, and having all those choices will give people an opportunity to see what they like. Perhaps the distro guys will offer a "ten dollar home surfer personal edition" ONE cd full install option. One browser, one office, some media, games, email, etc. Some sort of intro deal, similar to knoppix perhaps. I can see that selling especially well off the shelf at the software retail outlets. That one can have the "one of each" offerings, see no reason that couldn't work. Heck, I'd probably buy those instead of what I have now. I like getting the dead trees manuals though, don't know how much that is in your typical boxed distro price. On screen is OK but I am old school on manuals, I want that paper in my hands.
That interest on all the various apps you get on a full install now will get back to the developers and distro releasers in various ways, from increased downloads of updates by app to participation on forums or newsgroups, etc. It's info that gets used in the evolution of the OS and it's related applications. Certainly better than being offered a very small set. All this info will eventually result in a more "unified" desktop. Apps that suck won't get used much, they will get fixed or abandoned. Apps that work that people can actually *find* in their menus will get used and worked with and developed further. I just found it really neat coming from a different background to see all that stuff, I was impressed before first boot. Ya I got a thousand apps maybe 100 are any good-that's still dozens way more than ya get with the alternatives on their default install. It's just slap cool. And as I get better at linux and want to "do more" half the time I already got the "do more" installed! It ain't perfect, but dang, it's still cool. And after awhile, stuff I really am not probably ever going to use, no probs, out it goes, make more space. I think most folks like more "stuff", especially families, something for everyone on a default install. You got games for kids all the way to apps you can actually do work and make a living at, automagically. And for business, again, what's not to like? Office apps, advanced server and security apps, all right there for free to not much money. cool beans. Right now I can take a hundred dollar bill and go shopping and get a used box AND a boxed distro that is more than enough for my needs, that 100$ and seriously up is what the "other guys" want for a coupla disks. For some folks that ain't enough, for a lot of people it's plenty, and it just keeps getting better. I just can't see it as any sort of major problem so far. The little quirks I've run into aren't much different from quirks in my other computing experiences.
I will admit to a bit of "buchananisms" in my thinking. I would be a tad more comfortable with what we originally had as our model nation, if I was allowed to pick and choose. Not much in the way of foreign entanglements. A constitutional RESTRICTED central government that "knows it'splace". Inflation proof currency, ie, no fiat poof created debt notes from a central private bank, rather a commodities and tangibles based currency with PMs being part of it and it's front end. Sane and controlled immigration based on current reality of available land and jobs, not a wide open southern border with almost zero controls like we have now. That's a pure insult to the people doing it the legal way, and it's a huge national security menace. Rule of "law" that is based on the english language and common sense and not obscurity and how much money you have. A lot more "independents" rather than fractionalization based on political for-profit "parties". Very small organized standing army, and a much larger militia/guard like switzerland has currently and like we used to have. No "wars" except as a last resort and any of them to be thoroughly lawful based on formal declarations. Eliminate professional "politician" class-as-career, and a return to citizen representation. Governmental "service" to be just that, a patriotic service, with a time limit (say ten years maybe) then back to the private sector and no governmental pensions, so we don't "breed" entrenched untouchable anonymous bureaucracy. Having some way so those who "make the rules" cannot "profit from the rules they made".
And etc.
We can trade with the world, I have no probs with that, I have BIG probs in trading with the world when the long range results are giving people the illusion of wealth when it's temporary and based on accumulated trinkets that are based on credit that can't even be paid off until well into the next generation-IF the creidt issuing was stopped this second. That's just plain lame. We can have tourists-but then they need to go home. We've hit the pacific ocean in our western expansion, we no longer have "free land", that phase of the US expansion is over, we can't sustain that. Also and this is pretty important, most of the nation west of the mississippi is maxed out on fresh water, there just isn't any more than what's there now and is replensihsed by the sparse rain. It's almost beyond maxed. It's a point that's overlooked quite a bit when discussing tech and macro economics, but there silently generation after generation is this 'water" deal, just one of those things you need to keep "expanding" until you can't.. Oil/gas/electric we seem to be able to keep ahead of, water is a totally different story.
So ya, probably a lot of similarities, namely some sane amount of protectionism, not wanting to arm and enrich people who are most likely our "enemies", keeping control of the borders a lot better, making sure we ALWAYS have a fully diverse economy including agricultue and vertical manufacturing at least in the critical areas, and a government that is truly representative of the "people" and not international corporations that hold no loyalty except profits. Some things just can't be quantified exactly with a dollar sign.
I'm not a xenophobe, but that doesn't mean I am supposed to care so little for my US neighbor that I don't care what happens to them just to make me a few more bucks. Just not built that way, not my mindset to be so..mercenary I guess you could term it, about money, you could put it. We take care of our own US "family" FIRST, then maybe help out the rest of the world. That's my default. To say again, not to perpetuate buggwhip jobs, but to keep and save still useful and necessary jobs and industries, and to way more insure domestic security. Security is hard to put a price on until lack of same bites you, then you realise you didn't spend enough attention to it or were too preoccupied with other things. Better safe than sorry. The US-or any other nation-has nothing to be ashamed of looking out for it's own interests. We should and they should. I'm not a proponent of a "one world government", I am content with nations and national soverignty, flawed as that can be, the proposed alternative is too dang scary and too probable to turn into a disaster. IMO of course.
Sorry I jumped around so much, you can probably make some sense of it though.
Slashdot Mirror
--well, it's not racist but it's practical.
As to mexico, their castillian "elite" are some of the more classic and vile racists on the planet. Their exploitation of indian and mestizos is well documented, as are their abuses in the military, the federales, and in "business" in general. Major high level drug production and smuggling is just one of their crimes, and a lot of that effects the US tangentially in parallel with our for-profit scam drug "wars". Mexico's failed political and economic model based on graft and bureaucracy over the past 80 years or so have caused their problems more than any other single factor. Mexico is a nation rich in natural resources including abundant fossil energy, two great oceans with seaports, vast good agricultural land and a willing and enthusiastic workforce, yet they still struggle economically. 10% of their population has emigrated, primarily to the US, because their globalist two class society rulers in government and business are-racist lamers. Goons. All they are doing with the connivance of our high level goons is exporting their "revolutionary" potential, it's a sort of defusing of the situation so they can continue their scams and corruption and stay in power.
It is perfectly acceptable to "notice" this and as US person, who appreciates the basic concepts of right and wrong and good and evil to consider this "wrong". And it's also acceptable to consider destroying our existing middle class to be a "not" good idea in an attempt to fix this situation. There are better ways to go about this, and to be humane about it, certainly better than the path we have been set on by our so called "leaders". For an extremely simplified gist, it's possible for BOTH nations to create more jobs without resorting to huge population moves or destroying numbers of existing jobs. It doesn't have to be one or the other.
Personally, if forced to choose between the two, I would much rather go to war against the mexican organized government criminal cartel than with iraq, they are a bigger long range and immediate threat, IMO. But that's a totally different topic for another time. There's a variety of reasons, but not right now.
Don't worry, you'll "get it" when it's your turn on the unemployment dole, and when that runs out, to take one of the upcoming government "New Deal part two" work force project jobs.
And no, that isn't far fetched as all. It's coming, get used to the idea, you and I have been sold out. The US has millions of people who thought their skills (blue and white collar, across the board)and job were sorta kinda secure, and they weren't. There's millions more independents who are having a harder and harder time finding shorter work contracts that pay less and less. And even more millions who bought into the stock market because "they knew what they were doing" and believe "everyone can be a winner" in the stock market casino and parroting globalism and "free trade" as some sort of automagical economic panacea. Whoops, that got drove home the past few years for 90%+ of the "investors". All this and more is happening, very, very quickly.
And yes, plenty of individual exceptions,and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt you don't "fit" any of those above categories-yet- but in general terms, I am correct, as it isn't opinion, it's just noting empirical data.
One reply for AC. You are welcome for the comments.
"mass equivalence" hmm that means photons are almost the same as that stuff that was laying on the plate on thursdays back at my old junior high. It was a meat-like equivalent.
--I did read the article and a lot of other articles on the subject. Your assumption is incorrect. I also don't own or even am considering owning an xbox, nor do I ever play video games, so there's another assumption you got wrong. I am not personally trying to crack the key, another assumption wrong. I don't use drugs, so your assumption on crack is incorrect.
And you are also wrong on the other notions, political and legal or quasi legal pressure is being put on modchip makers, "cracking" encrypted software and reverse engineering closed source is still a serious gray area and several suits past and present exist. EULAS on software are a self written get out of jail free card non-warranty on propietary software manufacturers end (I've read those too), and really don't exist outside that industry.
As to car modding, of course I am aware of that as pertains warranties. But no car company puts legal or political or economic pressure on the aftermarket and racing guys for doing their business, on the contrary, they gleefully snag and put to good use any advances they can find. They are more than willing to lend their trademarks and logos to them to slap on their cars at the track. Engineers are employed in the automakers stable, extremly skilled out of the box thinking and HIGH PAID engineers exist in the aftermatket and modification areas. NASCAR and NHRA innovations have added about as much to detroit's bottom line over the years as the sum total of their in house engineers. The price is right for detroit,and they aren't as plain vanilla stupid as the software houses or hollywood. They can and have learned from their mistakes in the past, but those other guys just keep making the same ones over and over again and go running to bigbrodotgov nanny.
A lot of intelligent people in those industries, but a severe lack of common sense sometimes at the upper management levels. Must go with the mindset I guess, don't know why, but there ya go.
You get one reply as an AC from me, so here it is.
--"protectionism IS selfish, as in "I sort of prefer keeping my income and job and home and making sure my immediate family and nieghbors and country keep theirs as well". And the deal is there's nothing wrong with this. Nothing at all. It is the nature of a marketplace to seek a profit-even an individual profit. It's also the nature of a "marketplace" to band together to "protect" itself from an "attack" from outside, be it economic or physical. You can be protective WITHOUT being predatory, and therein I think is where the confusion arises.
I own a home, I help to protect my home by firmly locking the door when I leave. I have the option of answering the door when someone knocks on it, or I can ignore the knock. That is my right and option. If I think in my judgement opening the door at that particular time is a "good idea", then I am free to do so. I hear a knock, there's a girl scout selling cookies. No probs, it's a "good deal" to me, I am happy with the trade. On the other hand I hear a knock and I see someone I don't wish to speak to-for any reason-it is my right to not answer the door and talk or do business. I am "protecting" myself based on my evolving analysis of "life".
There comes a time you have to make decisions on what is important not only for yourself personally, but for your family, your neighbors and neighborhood, and your nation as a whole. The US is now in a spiraling-->down deficit in economics and in good quality jobs(yes it's headed that dirtection), in diverse vertical manufacturing and agriculture and in informational technology, both hardware and software. We used to be great at that stuff, but now we seek others to do the work, but for short term profits for *some folks* here.
I am of the opinion that we would be more advised to "protect" these industries over the long haul rather then to trade them off for short term profits in the near term. That doesn't mean we can't trade, and it also doesn't mean we should just give away the store so that 1% of our population can get fabulously wealthier, and the other 99% enjoy cheaper stuff for a few years then go broke and out of work. What happens in the other nations is not completely our business, nor should it be. We can be friends, ewe can trade, but we aren't required to just give it away. We as a nation went through that development phase long ago, it just isn't our fault to ensure that rapid change takes place "over there" at our expense. We can pick and choose on it, and by and large we are a generous people. the world is changing though, and swiftly.
Anyone has to ask themselves, if a large nation basically gives away(sells off cheap) it's manufacturing base, then gives away (sells off cheap) it's informational services base, and gives away (sells off cheap) it's food production base..uhhh..what's left? Really, what's left?
If you follow our trends over the past two decades, then extrapolate them to any sort of logical conclusion, you will see that this "future" if followed as being done now would result in the US as primarily a two class society with WARFARE as it's only profit making export.
Think on it, see if that is correct. Take away eventually all the normal jobs the US middle class has, what is left over?
Now, ask yourself, you REALLY want to see that? If all we in the US have left for work in this nation is manufacturing weapons, manufacturing prisons, and that's it,throw in bread and circuses crap like hollywood and pro sports and videogames for grins, well, what do you think we'll be doing for a living here? Big hint-you won't like it.
I already don't like it and I live here. My momma didn't raise no son who couldn't learn from history.
"Protecting" my nation from that fate is a *good deal*. "Protecting" anyone else's "your" nation from that you should consider as an even "better" deal.
---outsourcing wouldn't happen (near as much) if corporations weren't given tax breaks up front to move offshore, and if the US leaders cared as much for their citizens as other nations care for theirs and instituted a little sane protectionism tariffs to protect still viable good industries in the US. "Programming" is not "buggywhip manufacturing" as critics like to say about protectionism in general. The root word "protect" is neither a swear word nor a word of derision, although some people seem to think it is. Perhaps a more unified programming/IT guild would have more political clout as an organization rather than as a collection of a million + individuals whom have little clout *as* individuals. There's a reason why coordinated organizations work better than groups of random individuals, else we wouldn't see organizations in any field or endeavor. At least agreeing on the basic premise that "jobs are good, let's keep them" would be hard to argue against.
--unemployed guy driving by walmart, knowing all this stuff is cheap and on sale. He thinks to himself, "uh huh, big deal, doesn't mean as much as it did when I still had a job".
--this is an interesting case. I am reluctant to use the old cars and computers analogy, but it's appropriate here. For decades and generations car companies have come up with innovations and released a product that they own, then sell. It has shape, size, presence, features, etc all unique to that comapny, and covered by various laws of ownership and some laws on use, but still a lot of leeway. And for the same amount of time guys have decided that these products needed "souping up" and customiizing and modifying, and it's all been mostly legal. You can take a car, moidify it heavily and still drive on the public road following a set of road use laws, but you can still drive completely different if you want to on your own property or someone elses property-say a race track-in any manner you wish to. They did it for their own reasons which aren't revelant, make it go faster, make it travel on roads not envisioned as the primary road the designers were aiming for (think heavy off road mods), make it look nicer or whatever.
Seems like more than ample past case law to make hardware modding "legal". In the cars cases it might have required the hotrodder to completely disassemble the entire car, see how every single part worked and how it was designed, then decide how they wanted to do it better or different to suit their needs. It's more than legal, it's commonplace and no one thinks twice about it, it's a huge business and millions of people do it as a hobby.
Microsoft is seeking to become a huge exception to the past rules, as are a slew of other computer hardware and software companies. They can't have it both ways, if they actually are selling a product, then said product must be covered by a consumer warranty, and last I looked microsoft insists their products are as-is, no warranty unless they deem to do allow it at their leisure, ie, the "designed software" and "hard coded into the hardware" part. It's one or the other, if they want all the rights of a sellable consumer product, then they must accept normal useability warranties that are applied to every other "product" out there, and they most definetly DON'T accept that, so the courts should tell them (and ALL those other companies that insist on propietary excuslivity "rights" to their warez) to get stuffed until they do. As to modding the hardware itself, it's the same, either you get to OWN a piece of stuff or you don't, you can't half own something. Case precedence should have been set a long time ago, but it wasn't, now it's a big ole mess because it's become entrenched into computer-dom that they can have their cake and eat it too, something no other product has, and only one private business in the US currently enjoys (outside utilities and that gets into what is a utility), and that's major league baseball, which is goofy enough but exists.
--there are two issues here, one is fraud with the letter, the other one is "what is a domain?".
There's been several good analogies in the thread, here's mine: Domains are "more similar" to a government allowed frequency monopoly that the FCC grants to a broadcaster. Broadcaster pays x amount of money per year for this license, and also must follow a set of rules. In this case switch FCC as a governmental agency to a private company that has similar powers "subcontracted" to them. We do this now in a big way inside the US in the prison system, a lot of them are privately owned and run (wackenhut for instance). I don't like that, but it's current reality,a very important public governmental *thing* being subbed out to a private definetly for-profit concern can lead to a lot abuses, IMO.
Where it is different is that there isn't any total exclusivity to this particular subcontractor,although they are *very big and very known and quite well used*, all they have going for them is inertia and size, as other forms of registration exist-albeit small and not used much-and it's international in scope, just not within a single state or nation.
The FCC can "grant" a license to someone to broadcast on such and such freq, outside their jurisdiction in another nation that doesn't mean a thing, and two signals can and frequently are on the same freq, or pointing at a similar place to follow the analogy. Happens all the time in radio. There's various international *almost-rules* but in fact there is no absolute enforcement short of warfare.
here's another way to look at it
The basic reality is, although it *appears* to be a property rights issue as to the word address represented as the domain "name", the "rights" involved don't actually exist because the REAL property itself doesn't exist, only the temporarily placed digital SIGN that POINTS TO where a temporarily installed digitial numeric address exists, and it's quite possible to have any number of signs, all saying different things, that will point to the same address.
If it was REAL property you could own it forever if you chose to, like a trademark, car, or house. It would be unique, and "yours".
The IP number and actual computer where the content is hosted, and any copyrighted content served therein and from is the real "property" in the classic sense of property, the sign giving directions to it is just an advertising and direction finding convenience and a separate thing, although still a "sort-of" property,it isn't absolute in any sense, it can never be "owned" forever, therefore isn't property in any other sense compared to any other sort of property in past historical common law.
These signs-pointing-to the real property have varying levels of advertising effectiveness in attracting "travelers" on the road that are looking for addresses to stop at. In that case the signs themselves are a separate piece of "sort of property" from the IP address and content served, and the people who build and set out the signs-the domain registrars-own all of them as if you don't pay them off you lose it, so you never "own" them as property, you temporarily lease them with limited rights. And you can still put your own signs out and use other sign companies if you want to, just one has currently more advertising impact.
So there's two pieces of property-so now you have to ask which is more valuable and who actually owns each piece of property. The website creator and host sort out with themselves who owns what over there, but any "word" domain name you can't ever, ever "own" unless you "do it yourself" with your own domain server, and it still can't stop anyone from doing it themselves and copying the same wording and pointing at their property, so it gets down to who has a better advertising company and who will use your advertising directions over some other fellow's constructs. Both are legal in other words, no one over the other in toto is possible, although currently it is more highly probable that one will get used a lot more than the other.
Now how you contract that with another sign pointing company because you realise doing it yourself isn't real effective and you want to go with the current entrenched "bigdog" in the sign pointing business is a variable, if you choose to keep renting their advertising signs that give directions to your 'real' property that you can own forever that's an easier issue. In that case you have a tort action if they fail to fulfill their side of the contract, so that part to me seems like a slam dunk for the website originator and whomever paid the loot first to the sign pointing company that stuck the signs out. That's really easy to see. In this particular case the sign pointing company screwed up because they were lamers and didn't verify who was who effectively,so they should lose in the first case, BUT, they themselves have a civil tort-potential against the letter sender, who also may suffer an additional criminal action if the state (and feds actually) chooses to prosecute.
Law gets easier to understand if you first sort out the differences between dealing in "real property" and "commerce" and tangibles you can own forever and temporary intangibles.
--a synthetic thread that didn't absorb water might work like that, but the problem would be you'd need so many of them attached (glued?) to the upper glass collection plate that they would block the sunlight infra rad heat from hitting the water to be distilled in the bottom of the solar collection box. You want as much "open" space as possible so the heat gets transferred to the water so it will evaporate. Catch 22 then. When the distiller is operating, as the water heats up from the hot sun hitting it, first you get a 'fog" on the inside of the glass, just like on your windshield in cold weather. Next you can see the individual droplets getting bigger and bigger, until the weight of the single drops overcomes the surface tension/adhesion on the glass, and the slight angle of the glass allows the drops to "break free" and flow downhill until they come up against a stop and then drip straight down into the collection trough, which is itself at a sight angle to where it exits the box into a short collection tube going to whatever container you have. That's the simple design and it worked well until that dang "too sticky" problem started getting bad. It worked really, really well the first year too, automatic, low tech, lotsa distilled water from some pretty hard well water.
Thanks for the input, yourself and the other poster, helps to have different ideas thrown at problems sometimes, I got some more to think about now. One would be a variation on the threads idea, not for the delivery but for the propogation of liquid water into "humidity", something that would keep the same size box I have but increase the surface area of the water so it evaporated faster at a lower temp. A mass "wicking" action on the bottom of the box itself, some sort of fibrous spongy mat perhaps. Hmmmm and hmmmmm Between that and an external coil condenser it could up the output without having to deal with the "sticky glass" syndrome. hmmmm
..to be fair to the guy he described what he was up against "as is". I ain't he, but would wager he and his company are up against the current shaky and mostly stagnant economy, and the decision from higher-higher is probably something along the lines of "make what we got work as long as possible". Hmm, for that matter bet he ain't alone, similar is probably being ordered by the PHBs all over corporate-land.
kinda like picard uttering "make it so" to some *almost* unsolvable problem, heh
--it's a very shallow box, so it would require hundreds of smaller cones then some sort of feed delivery system from the apex drip point of each cone. The steep angles would help of course, just no way to do it practically with the existing rig. A rippled glass might work better then a flat pane, but the cost for such a pane would be high I would wager. Deep single cones, put over holes in the ground, are an emergency solar distiller that work. I have made those, just loose plastic larger than the hole diameter, drop a marble in the center and it will fall until the plastic sheet is tight to make a "cone". You place a collection can down in the bottom. It's "enough" with a three foot across hole and putting a lot of torn off vegetation in the hole tomake around a quart a day in hot weather. What we are after is a daily steady supply of some gallons. Most likely I will first try the ultra buffing/polishing, and if that doesn't work go to a very large narrow diameter coil of hose where the moisture laden hot air, pumped by it's own heat outside the box, has enough surface area in the coil for cooling and condensation.
the filtration would be neat if it was possible cheaply, reverse osmosis would do it, but that is some specialised expensive equipment that takes electricity. The deal with having the distilled is you want as pure as water for "topping off" as possible, as any minerals introduced in the storage batteries will stick to the lead plates, reducing their effectiveness. That's one of the quickest ways to ruin any lead acid battery, using normal tap water in them, or hard well water. Now filtered rainwater works about as good as distilled, as rain is just distilled water condensed around a dust or soot particle, but there again, getting the mud out is the problem. I could dedicate one high end water filter to it, but as I only have two, daily use for one and one carefully packed away as reserve, I'd rather just do distilled.
Solar "stuff" is a lot of fun to play with, as well as practical-WHEN it works! hahaha! I will say the PV's are just a joy, day after day, nice clean power.
---hmm, didn't think of buffing it, thanks for the tip! It's a pain to get to the inside glass, it's permanently glued down with caulk, have to cut it off then re apply the caulk each time-another lame design feature. The good thing is I didn't buy it, the folks I work for did. If I don't make a solar water heater out of the box, I might try building a door for the glass on a hinge with some sort of permanent gasket, then try some more cleaning techniques, including the buffing. We washed it carefully before, used paper towels, crumpled newspaper, and lint free cloth, truly annoying to not have it "work" again after those efforts. Seems like the vinegar should have removed the calcium/mineral deposits though, but it obviously didn't. It's a perfectly good theory, actually evaporates the water quickly once the sun starts hitting it, just the collection part is dismal. Anyway, it's winter now, wouldn't work all that good when it's so cold out, next spring I'l mess with it again. I *might* try exhausting the moisture laden air and just using a huge coil of hose as the cooling mechanism leading to the collection container, then not worry about collecting it inside the box. Tipping it slightly so that a normal thermosiphon effect would come into play would probably work, ie, "heat doth rise".
Had to refill one bank of batts yesterday, it wasn't too bad, 24 T-105 Trojan 6 volters took around 6 gallons to top them off to the correct levels. I had a large food grade plastic drum I was trying to fill up before winter with the solar distilled water, that was "the plan" anyway, too bad I have to waste juice now to make the water. Oh well...
--I'd like that community wireless deal as well, but how do you connect to the backbone? At some point there is a hard wired connection in this picture that costs serious moolah and takes advanced expertise. How can joe average actually "get" a real internet access without going through an ISP? Even if someone else does it and you leech off their wireless, it is still costing that someone else a lot of money. there's no "individual" internet access that is commonly used or avaialable, it all has an immediate middleman involved, whether dial up or dsl or cable. I'd like to do that right now-connect to the net and bypass the ISP- but, no idea how to do it without becoming an ISP myself and purchasing some expensive pipe, and accumulating the "howto's".
---media advertisers don't have a direct way to see who's watching the ads, but they sure as heck have an indirect way, and that's if the advertising *works* or not. Ads that work and sell widgets keep getting run as widgets keep getting sold. It's a multi zillion a year industry that's been up and running for generations now, so it must be "true facts". It's kinda like spam, they use mass scale to be effective,and repetition. x-million of people see a tv advertisement, a much smaller number buy the product. On the internet it's different because there's a much smaller number of people seeing the content as compared to the cost of providing the content. Add in "stripping" the ads, the big companies will come up with what you are seeing-legislation to "crack down" on sharers as the first step.
Personally I have never seen a comparison. although vcr's and copying over the air or cable shows has been around for awhile now, there hasn't been any huge explosion of people "sharing" vcr tapes, not anything numbers-wise like the "sharing" of stuff you see on the internet. the people who produce the content are not going to stop their efforts until they get paid for as many single "viewings" as they can come up with, practically speaking, and I wouldn't put it past them to go so far as trying to do huge numbers of arrests and fines (via court orders) in order to drive home the point, that and getting people kicked off their isps for sharing-either "just" leeching or full sharing. I don't expect them to give up, nor do I expect the countermeasures to cease, I just think they will most likely "win" once joe average starts getting busted and fined all over. Right now only the huge sharers (by bandwith) and outright mass production-for - profit copiers are getting busted and harassed, but as soon as it gets to 'anyone', file sharing will slow down tremendously. It won't stop, but it'll slow down significantly.
It's the golden rule in action, them's that gots the gold makes the rules,and it's always been that way.
quottage "We certainly dont want the internet to become modeled after the cable tv media structure."
I think this is exactly what is going to happen to "the internet". It's going to follow both cable/satellite type services, and be combined with telco style charges. You'll be buying various "package deals" to content along with your net access. There will evolve several large internet providers. People say it'll never happen, but I predict it will because there's no practical way to get to the backbone without going through the isp. There's the chokepoint, and there's where the interface and payment plans will be collected. The trends in the industry now will be to watch bandwith, provide pay per view on demand, and that will require centralised services as having it for thousands of providers will become too cumbersome for the payments. The wild wild west days of the internet are soon to change dramatically. I don't want it to change, but the money is going to come from someplace because "the internet" is running at a loss if you deduct the guhzillions of venture capitalist input,which is drying up. Copyright issues, "security" and bandwith will lead the business model.
--we use solar PV here, and have three battery banks. Needing a lot of distilled water every month, we got a commercial solar distiller, which is mounted down by the panel arrays. It's roughly a 3 foot by 5 foot box with a glass top that is sealed to the sides. It worked pretty good for around a year,2-3 gallons a day output, then it stopped working, the glass developed some recurring film that stops the drips from falling into the collection tray. We tried adjusting the angle, etc, opened it up, cleaned the glass several times-nada. It evaporates water great,that part works as advertised, then the water that collects on the glass just sits there until the weight of the droplet causes it to fall right back into the pool of water, instead of sliding down the incline. So we switched to an electric distiller for now, next summer I'm going to make a hot water heater out of the thing and design and build my own distiller. The glass cleaning deal really stumped us, we tried vinegar, windex, you name it, that glass is spotless clean, but within a day or two it gets dirty enough to stop working-just unacceptable. There's probably some sort of application chemical like rain-x or something to use but it's a hassle to keep doing that, it should "just work" for at least a month without having to open it up for additional cleaning. I imagine on a bigger scale it would actually work better as you could have extremely steep sides for the collection efforts.
There's a neat deal that was invented, it uses rotating sails to collect moisture from the air, some places in south america are using it now. this was covered on slashdot before earlier this summer, here's a generic link to a page of links about fog collection. cool stuff.
----as a linux noob I can say I would love to see that feature. I keep a small console open but mostly I don't use it yet, and being able to see what's happening all the time would help (me at least) make the jump.
--volunteer at an abused woman's and children's shelter, and only do tutoring with other adults present. It's also a good place to haul over your old computer and donate it. I would imagine the officials there will run a background check on you first, but that is understandable.
--in these days of terrorism, this watch could give someone an immediate headsup to evac any area that has become dangerous from perhaps a "dirty" radiological device or just from some *insane goon* spreading radioactivity in some manner. Maybe well before any "official" word of an attack is released on the radio, etc. And after an attack it would be useful for noting hotspots and relatively "cleaner" areas to avoid or travel in. Too bad it's so expensive I would get one to add to my survival/preparedness supplies.
--ok man ya got me, that DOES sound lame! heh heh heh From the Department of Redundancy Department.
I will now go drink more coffee, see if that helps, it might,might not! I should always wait for cup #2 to post!
--the bls stats are quite complex and can be interpreted several ways. They have a lot of different breakdowns as to seasonal and non seasonal and race and age and you want it you got it. My basic gestalt in my post was that it's still a guess in large part. I think the numbers are lowballed tremendously. People not actively seeking work can mean a lot, sometimes seeking work is not an offical way to seek work so it's not counted. An example, someone who has tried to use their personal contacts in various ways, querying friends who might be working at some plant, they get told "don't bother, they aren't hiring and laid off some more folks" won't bother applying, so because they didn't officially go there and fill out a form they are counted as "not seeking work". things of that nature skew the stats. It really doesn't matter to people so long term unemployed they have lost almost all hope of getting anything.
We also have the phenomena of people who perhaps just a few years ago had income level A from a single job now having to work multiple jobs and many more hours to approach what they had gotten to before.
This is really a complex subject that is hard to cover in casual posts on the internet. And obviously some geographical areas are better than others,some industries are better than others, but I would feel confident stating that the "job" outlook in the US now has gone downhill extremely fast the past few years, VERY broadly speaking. And it compounds, that one lost job and income gets spread around in the local area immediately as that person has dropped normal consumerism, they are buying "less" and perhaps not even being able to cover their bills, thereby reducing others income, which leads them to spend less, and etc. It's almost exponential in nature.
On the tech side, I've seen several topics/threads here where you can readily see a lot of problems even with people with a decade or more good IT experience and work history having extremely difficult times finding more work. On the blue collar side it's "worse than that" most places.
Anecdotals are just that, but I've seen this on several forums, this topic comes up a lot, quite a bit more than it did in the 90's for instance, and it goes beyond "dotcom bubble". One large forum I visited-a broad cross section across the US and across various white and blue collar industries-had an informal poll that showed as high as 1/3 of the respondents out of work or severely underemployed compared to a few years ago. I know that isn't scientific at all, but still... I've also seen this personally, just locally here, an example, I know of a few guys locally been in construction trades for decades,older guys with families, etc, regular old solid folks, worked steady all their lives, lately they are having to travel over 200 miles roundtrip a day to find any sort of work, even a one week minor job. They are just plain scared that even that is going to poof. Technically they show up as "employed" but it is quite tenuous.
I look at other sorts of informal "indicators", the one that really shows me the labor market is going downhill is the used car lots. Couple of years ago there was a variety of cars, older barely running things to sorta new. A regular normal mix especially in price range. Now the lots (around here at least) are full of practically new vehicles, and all the banks have repos for sale parked out front. The new vehicle dealers are practically dragging people off the street to get them to buy. The pawn shops are full to bursting. Yard sales on the weekends have increased several hundred percent in the past couple of years. Homes for sale have gone up tremendously, the ad level in the paper has just exploded, and I am in what is considered to be a pretty decent area as far as my state is concerned. And the help wanted section has dropped to literally print editions of spam-work from home on puter and make millions, sell avon, etc, with very few "real" jobs being advertised.
"Bottom line" is that the economy is suffering on several fronts now, rising un and under employment being just one of them. And it's really not hyperbole or exaggeration to those 780,000 people who just got their very last source of income, it's stark reality in their face.
--totally agree with you on the energy side being a major factor in successful industrialization. One of the reasons I am convinced the 21st century will be the era of the "resource wars" primarily over oil, fresh water, and arable land that doesn't require massive irrigation to be productive. I am quite pessimistic over this. I think that some smaller wars coming up have a very good chance of getting to a "major" level because of population pressures and demand for just *more* of everything and oil still being so necessary.
Link to a website with a plethora of energy related articles/editorials
Note, this website definetly has a "doomer" type bent, but there's a lot of data here.
and here's when la county tried to charge property taxes for satellites overhead
Here's a clue to the tax problem in california, they could try controlling their borders better, allow lawful citizens to live and work there, kick out illegal criminals. Also stop being a clueless nanny state in the legislature. Might save a few bucks that way. Just a thought.
--hey man, I grew up in michigan and I went to the kelloggs plant too! Schooltrip-cereal=neat! We also went to some meat plant I forget the name of now, tried a buncha sausages out. Kids like museums and zoos, but they like to EAT too! heh heh heh When I was a teenager we used to sneak over to zug island in the detroit river at night. Kinda like a real life sci fi doom end of the world city of the future. I guess a working steel mill or a foundry would be a good addition to the guys industry tour. And a working mine if you can find one. I remember going by some mine, think it was lima ohio, had this WHOPPER piece of equipment there, a dragline maybe, just humongous.
--I agree somewhat, there's a lot of redundancy, but then again, CDs are cheap, it's really not much if any more costly to include a lot of apps, it only takes a bit more time to install, or you have a choice up front to only install a limited set or even a very limited set by choosing custom, and having all those choices will give people an opportunity to see what they like. Perhaps the distro guys will offer a "ten dollar home surfer personal edition" ONE cd full install option. One browser, one office, some media, games, email, etc. Some sort of intro deal, similar to knoppix perhaps. I can see that selling especially well off the shelf at the software retail outlets. That one can have the "one of each" offerings, see no reason that couldn't work. Heck, I'd probably buy those instead of what I have now. I like getting the dead trees manuals though, don't know how much that is in your typical boxed distro price. On screen is OK but I am old school on manuals, I want that paper in my hands.
That interest on all the various apps you get on a full install now will get back to the developers and distro releasers in various ways, from increased downloads of updates by app to participation on forums or newsgroups, etc. It's info that gets used in the evolution of the OS and it's related applications. Certainly better than being offered a very small set. All this info will eventually result in a more "unified" desktop. Apps that suck won't get used much, they will get fixed or abandoned. Apps that work that people can actually *find* in their menus will get used and worked with and developed further. I just found it really neat coming from a different background to see all that stuff, I was impressed before first boot. Ya I got a thousand apps maybe 100 are any good-that's still dozens way more than ya get with the alternatives on their default install. It's just slap cool. And as I get better at linux and want to "do more" half the time I already got the "do more" installed! It ain't perfect, but dang, it's still cool. And after awhile, stuff I really am not probably ever going to use, no probs, out it goes, make more space. I think most folks like more "stuff", especially families, something for everyone on a default install. You got games for kids all the way to apps you can actually do work and make a living at, automagically. And for business, again, what's not to like? Office apps, advanced server and security apps, all right there for free to not much money. cool beans. Right now I can take a hundred dollar bill and go shopping and get a used box AND a boxed distro that is more than enough for my needs, that 100$ and seriously up is what the "other guys" want for a coupla disks. For some folks that ain't enough, for a lot of people it's plenty, and it just keeps getting better. I just can't see it as any sort of major problem so far. The little quirks I've run into aren't much different from quirks in my other computing experiences.
I will admit to a bit of "buchananisms" in my thinking. I would be a tad more comfortable with what we originally had as our model nation, if I was allowed to pick and choose. Not much in the way of foreign entanglements. A constitutional RESTRICTED central government that "knows it'splace". Inflation proof currency, ie, no fiat poof created debt notes from a central private bank, rather a commodities and tangibles based currency with PMs being part of it and it's front end. Sane and controlled immigration based on current reality of available land and jobs, not a wide open southern border with almost zero controls like we have now. That's a pure insult to the people doing it the legal way, and it's a huge national security menace. Rule of "law" that is based on the english language and common sense and not obscurity and how much money you have. A lot more "independents" rather than fractionalization based on political for-profit "parties". Very small organized standing army, and a much larger militia/guard like switzerland has currently and like we used to have. No "wars" except as a last resort and any of them to be thoroughly lawful based on formal declarations. Eliminate professional "politician" class-as-career, and a return to citizen representation. Governmental "service" to be just that, a patriotic service, with a time limit (say ten years maybe) then back to the private sector and no governmental pensions, so we don't "breed" entrenched untouchable anonymous bureaucracy. Having some way so those who "make the rules" cannot "profit from the rules they made".
And etc.
We can trade with the world, I have no probs with that, I have BIG probs in trading with the world when the long range results are giving people the illusion of wealth when it's temporary and based on accumulated trinkets that are based on credit that can't even be paid off until well into the next generation-IF the creidt issuing was stopped this second. That's just plain lame. We can have tourists-but then they need to go home. We've hit the pacific ocean in our western expansion, we no longer have "free land", that phase of the US expansion is over, we can't sustain that. Also and this is pretty important, most of the nation west of the mississippi is maxed out on fresh water, there just isn't any more than what's there now and is replensihsed by the sparse rain. It's almost beyond maxed. It's a point that's overlooked quite a bit when discussing tech and macro economics, but there silently generation after generation is this 'water" deal, just one of those things you need to keep "expanding" until you can't.. Oil/gas/electric we seem to be able to keep ahead of, water is a totally different story.
So ya, probably a lot of similarities, namely some sane amount of protectionism, not wanting to arm and enrich people who are most likely our "enemies", keeping control of the borders a lot better, making sure we ALWAYS have a fully diverse economy including agricultue and vertical manufacturing at least in the critical areas, and a government that is truly representative of the "people" and not international corporations that hold no loyalty except profits. Some things just can't be quantified exactly with a dollar sign.
I'm not a xenophobe, but that doesn't mean I am supposed to care so little for my US neighbor that I don't care what happens to them just to make me a few more bucks. Just not built that way, not my mindset to be so..mercenary I guess you could term it, about money, you could put it. We take care of our own US "family" FIRST, then maybe help out the rest of the world. That's my default. To say again, not to perpetuate buggwhip jobs, but to keep and save still useful and necessary jobs and industries, and to way more insure domestic security. Security is hard to put a price on until lack of same bites you, then you realise you didn't spend enough attention to it or were too preoccupied with other things. Better safe than sorry. The US-or any other nation-has nothing to be ashamed of looking out for it's own interests. We should and they should. I'm not a proponent of a "one world government", I am content with nations and national soverignty, flawed as that can be, the proposed alternative is too dang scary and too probable to turn into a disaster. IMO of course.
Sorry I jumped around so much, you can probably make some sense of it though.