Remove the lawyers. I've often heard the bottom of the ocean is a good start.
Politicians generations back could write simple laws that were short and people could understand. Now we have legal coding that resembles a computer obfuscation contest where even the experts can't understand it. Take the simple banking regulation that prevented the collapse that was what? 4 pages? The new "stronger" one still doesn't do what the old one did and is massive complex and we only have to take somebody's word that it is stronger than the old one despite allowing the practice that caused depressions TWICE. (keep in mind they'll never ever call something a depression again until almost everybody on the street does first.)
The rural areas that are not worth bothering with still need upkeep and it costs more not only because they are less profitable but also because they have more trouble from weather and trees to contend with. Electricity costs more too if you've ever lived or owned a cabin outside of the metro area. I am just fine with removing the fee since those rural people are too smug in thinking they are independent and don't know what welfare actually is despite them getting a disproportionately high amount of it.
I agree that the infrastructure was built so we do not need to be giving them more money. Personally, I don't see why the government doesn't handle the infrastructure instead of playing these stupid money games to have private monopolies rip us off; they DO cost us more in the end especially when we have duopolies which duplicate infrastructure to "compete" and with likely double the subsidies. They do not innovate, they milk; you.
I do not know if the old tanks were fiberglass ones it was sooo long ago when I looked into it - way before this new airpod "car" I never heard of that. I thought they'd get the cat car out the door by now.... Every few years it seems they started over again with a smaller car until this pod thing.
Cheap tanks will do more harm when they blow - but we are STILL talking about a non-combustion non-flammable situation and relatively LOW potential energy. This is not a tank full of a chemical reaction waiting to happen; it is merely a pressure differential. Hauling a propane tank in your car is more dangerous (or having a propane converted car.)
The MDI CAR (the wagon-like 1st car) was a deathtrap of compact car design; the tanks were not the issue, the car was GLUED together and they always had a loud engine problem. They likely will include a small fuel tank as a heater because you can get more from the air by heating it going into the engine.
In 3rd world places without any laws of the roads I think car safety is probably not your biggest worry. If your tanks blow air toward the other driver you might become like the porcupine of the road.
Actually I thought the technology was well suited for small boats where electrics are not so great of an idea. The noise in the water would help too, and air exhaust could be creatively used.
You are only as intelligent in so far as your application of it. Just like US industrial junk food makes it's people unhealthy (among other bad things,) it has spread and infected the world to varying degrees. The psychology that has socially engineered our modern generations Americans has "practical" uses to unethical profit/power seekers elsewhere. It just grew the most quickly in the USA. I'm not saying it hasn't spread elsewhere; but more traditional societies will cling to aspects of their past culture for longer than the USA which doesn't have anything like the national identities of the Europeans.
Anyhow, Americans choose to NOT think except when they are rationalizing their thoughtless actions to appease their ego's believe in their individualism and the cultures irrational extreme position on individualism--- such issues are never investigated it is as difficult as trying to argue religion. TV also makes your brain idle too low for too long while feeding you the natural drugs of escapism and I'm sure that makes people more stupid. Not permanently but willingly inactive. It is more clear if you have no TV and then come back after a decade.
American culture is engineered to be addicted consumers; it was sold as necessary to prevent another depression following the end of WW2 because we had people who didn't consume and not enough demand to create the jobs needed in the transition from an agrarian society. Want and need are really different words but in this new culture the two are practically synonyms. Planned obsolescence is one practical aspect but another is the rise of Fashion in the culture; which is ideal because then your long-lasting products are just undesirable and the owner screws themselves over (and doesn't blame you for making junk - they themselves believe it became junk and its not your fault, it is just OLD.) In the past some twit who shallowly judged people by fashion was a bad characteristic, now it is acceptable (except in the extremes, but such judgements are relative and gradual changes if noticed seem harmless.)
As somebody who stopped reading these long ago I can tell you that they are always more extreme planks than the politicians even ask for when they get into office. It is crafted by the dedicated party members and extreme factions and lobbyists as more of a large mission statement to appease and trick the infighters into rallying behind the chosen one. Why it still works so well on both sides is beyond me. You'd think they'd learn. The press rarely covers the planks-- and there are often 1 or two crazy ones that would harm the candidate forcing them to backtrack from it -- but that upsets some faction they need and after all, politicians give the press MONEY (now in the billions) and neither side would be happy with serious coverage of their planks.
They have no intention of following this - they only throw out a bone come election time or in rare cases are forced to do something and will just as easily leverage the opposition as an excuse for not really doing it. These platform documents rarely happen as written (if you want to get vague then you don't need them because the generalities don't need to be on paper) but of ALL politicians to expect to follow through with it-- Romney? really?? seriously?
Paultards were bought off with a bunch of song and dance from the party insiders they distrust so much. And Ron Paul is retiring because they found a home for his retarded son.
Doesn't anybody remember the leak describing how they were going to destroy wikileaks? They've been doing it.
Wikileaks is being made a negative example of what free press gets for doing it's duty to mankind. It needs to be a positive example and that is enough reason to defend Wikileaks. Furthermore, the illegal and high disregard for the meaning of law (by using twisted technical letters of the law) HARMS everybody going forward not only the press but it terms of how far officials can acceptably abuse the system without repercussions further regresses us back towards despotism.
The CIA deals with this kind of stuff, they plant seeds of discontent within any organization they are fighting-- USSR or now tiny groups where they still have cold-war level budgets but no empire to use them against. Assange probably has relatives who are informants against him. You don't know history if you think the CIA isn't capable of doing a huge amount against such a tiny relatively powerless group. Hell, the classic attack against idealistic movements is to make their leaders into self-serving pigs who put themselves before the cause they lead; nothing causes more internal conflict, demoralization, AND harms recruiting outside support. In this age of celebrity "press" and the US culture of making everybody into some kind of celebrity it practically happens all by itself. They could make a 110% dedicated idealist look like a self-serving celebrity without really trying. Any dedicated activist will leverage the celebrity culture to promote their cause despite knowing it will not help their personal life (surely he didn't think more sex was worth being the single biggest target of the US... If he wasn't well known, he'd be just another one of the RECORD number of journalists the USA "accidentally" killed.)
Me too. We have lock boxes for the remotes but whenever I actually remember the darn thing what I want is not in the box.
IT is underfunded and they seem to have temp student workers as filler for real IT. I had to fight to get external email access which they do not advertize but I knew they had it. They will not turn on IMAP or POP even though I know their server supports it. They had unix systems and now it is all windows crap; including the incorrectly implemented MS DNS server and the occasional issues that causes with it's odd caching scheme. The top IT are real IT staff from industry and while the head guy is a unix person he's given in to using windows because it is cheaper (that is, they don't have to hire somebody who can use a real server.)
Whiteboards smell and it bothers me. Chalk boards were replaced; whiteboards COST more and are more environmental the dust isn't really a problem.
Haven't you heard? All the conservative Christians have since redefined Christian to include Mormons! So anybody who doesn't accept Mormons as Christian simply because modern Mormons changed their minds is an intolerant Christian and probably racist against white people!
I know an evangelical couple who 4 years ago would have protested against a "cultist" (their word) being nominated. My what a difference 4 years of propaganda and a black man can make... some conservatives.
I wonder what they can get them to believe next? Scientology when Tom Cruise runs?
me too. Some politicians have done and some still do what is good for us-- but they are the freaks who manage to get past the two party filter that keeps their kind out of office and usually running in the 3rd party penalty box where they are constantly reminded how "fringe" and unimportant they are.
I see it as a good cop and bad cop routine. Most people fight over which one is the bad cop and are proud of their choice of the good cop. Both are against YOU and they need not like each other to do their jobs.
Nobody remembers seeing CSPAN with all those small government Republicans arguing for the HD transition and how it would boost the economy by making everybody buy new TVs. Then the Dems complaining poor people wouldn't be able to ruin their lives watching TV anymore.
HD standard was stupid too. They could have waited and timed it with mpeg 4 instead of the larger mpeg 2. At least then we'd be using H.263 for broadcast and they could send better error correction because digital error losses are MUCH WORSE than the tiny bit of static analog had. Actually, I've watched things where half the signal was probably lost to static and it still worked well enough - in analog. The format lacks proper audio track support. Don't get me started on the idiotic ratings system - in digital you should be able to bleep and blur out things frame by frame with additional data tracks. A whole industry could be created to provide such services to people privately.
We had to rush in HD because the big media were fearful internet TV would take over and the only thing they had going for them was resolution and their bandwidth advantage. NO! Don't use MP4 we are developing cable boxes to do that! NO! Don't send out a useful TV program guide then we can't sell them program listings. NO! Don't specify a fully universal standard so we can have cable-ready TVs (as usual, it'll be decades before the FCC makes cable signals standard.) The only BIG fight was about the silly broadcast copyright flag because: NO! don't allow modern replacements for VCRs (which the industry tried to kill as well. they delayed TVRs in the USA for years.) Netflix rose to power on demand not because of HD -- if the HD standard was delayed internet TV would be bigger now... and TVs now are getting "smart" we might have had a huge leap forward if we had waited instead of adopting it early. Broadcast TV might be dead (I wish) and instead we may have had that bandwidth used for true broadcast internet protocols - so then you can stream more than just crap local TV over that bandwidth... there are so many game changing things that could be done with that huge amount of premium bandwidth and it could have been retained by the FCC with companies paying for temporary data packet transmission instead of near-permanent frequency monopolies. In MOST areas of the USA the TV bandwidth goes unused - it could be giving us true cell phone broadband.
"Century of the Self" a good documentary which is only an intro to the selfishness of Americans and why they are so gullible and ignorant. From there you can find on your own why they are so unjustifiably confident and optimistic and how that increases failure (including wars.)
FYI, I'm American but somehow I slipped bye being socialized into one of the herd.
Great idea but no contest. Obama's would put forward a Nobel Prize winning Physicist and Romney will only have industry people; as is typically the case for republicans, not that the Democrats do not also have a big problem with choosing the wrong people from industry.
Also, Obama's people get filibustered more than anybody ever has so the people he picks are unlikely to be allowed. Democrats rarely block Republican appointments by comparison. Even Steven Chu would probably be blocked at this point based upon his excellent record. Have you seen the CPAN coverage of the house treating Chu like dirt? The hate in the room is palpable.
$1 app - why even risk a virus or jailbreak or download hassle
$10 app not valued at $10 - it still might not be worth the effort; but those greedy app developers can motivate somebody to put in more than $10 of their time just out of spite.
If you are going out of business anyway you may as well lower the price before you go under. Stop blaming everybody else except yourself. You don't set your value it doesn't matter what you think your work is worth; the consumers decide that and maybe there is no middle ground and you go out of business, that is life.
The poster and possibly the people who pushed the article up to the top do not understand how many business to business relationships work. This is not consumer relations this is a business customer who is LOCKED IN to a provider critical to their business. They do not get free recall solutions unless it is dirt cheap and even then the fix might be a profitable scam by the supplier.
If you want something even resembling consumer level care you have to make a big stink and threaten lawsuits. That doesn't work plenty of times because they'll have law firms on retainer-- there are plenty of business vs business lawsuits and arbitration that DO NOT involve patent disputes.
Juries can be nailed for a ton of things but are immune from being punished for their verdict. They can have any verdict they want including throwing out the laws in the case or saying the judge is an asshat. The judge can chuck their verdict but can't touch them. Appeals court gets a lot of this stuff so it doesn't matter a whole lot what the jury does.
It is also part of their ego; I know some brown shirts and their whole faith is based upon righteous infallibility -- I mean the faith in the GOP stuff they ditto. These are people who are just as bad on religion but never learned to make the distinction between the two. The GOP purposely has latched onto this confused demographic and purposely conflated matters. Take global warming in Australia, they lost huge progress because marketers succeeded in their (openly professed) strategy to tie anti-global warming conspiracy into the identity of being a conservative. So now you have conservatives who like, want, idealize being conservative feeling compelled to deny reality in order to be themselves!
Maybe you've seen organic versions of the same psychology? Such as Christians who don't think you are christian if you don't believe something they do? (wars have been fought...)
They can't be wrong on anything; the amount of effort they go to avoid it is amazing and imaginative rarely involving logic not because it doesn't exist but because the whole behavior is EMOTIONAL so their reasoning is already shutting down when the topic comes up. Those who can calm down a bit can get some thinking in to recall later-- but try to get somebody who is worked up to reason clearly and see for yourself.
Anyone know if Korea is looking to require Open Source in some part of the government? If not, everybody should make the threat when it comes time to upgrade windows...
Public land is heavily used by all ISPs. The ones that connect to your house they use public land to get to your house (the road system) while you could say that is not something that belongs in the discussion because it is not giving them money. I would say that public land which connects everybody together is an EXTREMELY valuable asset and the fact the public owns it is the reason we easily added infrastructure we take for granted. To allow private use of OUR land is a massive huge handout.
Same thing goes to our AIR SPACE over which the radio travels; although, we tend to think of that solely as a regulatory situation.
The fact his example will influence the future of disclosure of truth in our future is reason enough to support his well being. CAN YOUR EGO GET THAT FACT?
1) Ego. An easy attack against anybody who stands up openly to get pounded on by the giant. MLK was attacked in the same way. They all get the attack and it sticks to various degrees depending upon how they come across and what kind of person they are (appearance being most important.) I do not find his Ego any bigger than a newspaper editor (so then it is larger than average. )
2) the US planned to attack wikileaks by undermining its image to supporters; it was leaked. A good smear distorts or reframes the truth. Also, EGO is an old attack that always works well on activist groups. You should know this, right?? Idealistic groups' values system makes ego into a sin or blasphemy against their ideals. You undermine from within as well as their making their outward message look insincere, inauthentic, and self serving. It is the BEST attack for such groups. You don't have to be an expert in the CIA to use or know this (but they are the experts and he falls under their jurisdiction as well as the state dept.)
3) Americans have a simplistic view of political issues. For a democracy, they tend to limit their views to only authoritarian hierarchies! Wikileaks would have a "head ringleader" even if they did not have one. The US media and politicians still have a hard time grasping the occupy movement desperately trying to find some figurehead or make/find 1 volunteer to symbolize as a single representative for the movement. Notice how we always kill the #2 and now #1 man in the boogie man terrorist organization despite it hardly qualifying as an organization; if a terrorist lived he'd probably not know about his promotion until the news reported his death.
4) Wikileaks is a really small organization; much of it is distributed to small players or hidden secret players. Assange has made himself the public face of wikileaks and due to (3 above) he is the #1 target so he gets priority over all the others (leakers are another dept.) Assange HELPS everybody by being the focus of attack and being a good example (being a dick doesn't help anybody; but they were smearing him before he gave them fuel-- works both ways, the USA is trying to make a negative example of him.)
A coward CEO suddenly forgets everything and shifts leadership to diffuse the damage to his peers-- pleading incompetent while still expecting the unjustified salary... Many groups decide who is going to be the fall guy. Assange as the founder/editor is the legal target and he knew it.
5) Surely, a wiseman would realize that nobodies are disappeared and who knows or cares?? As the final decider and founder HE GOES TO JAIL not his PR man. By becoming his own PR man and fostering celebrity status he becomes a known person in our celebrity obsessed culture which protects him as the legal fall guy as well as wikileaks AND it increases exposure as well as humanizing an organization that is bound to be subject to dehumanizing techniques. The WISE move is what he did ego or not. I'm not saying that somebody acting wisely or who is wise will be wise in all their actions for their whole life (or not accused of foolish behavior.) Righteous positions give people great power and it goes to anybody's head at least a little bit.
The DoE and national labs have developed highly effective FLYWHEEL power storage systems. FLYWHEELS are highly effective today and provide short periods of power - when the sun does not come back up then you can worry about buying power from another provider. Most people don't seem to realize the HIGH amount of downtimes their current power stations have and how frequently the grid goes outside their area for power to meet demand; they even go to other companies and other states to buy power. It is a tiny very weak marketplace as it stands today. Many places are designed about double size so they can run half capacity and fix the other half- its more like 2 partially consolidated power plants. With a NEW power grid that is properly designed (and running high volt DC) it would create a marketplace for power--- some sell, others buy at night and sell it back during the day. Many distributed players can get involved.
Nuclear base-power will not be needed as it costs MORE than solar power TODAY and with a cheap grid you can run solar power from multiple states away... that is, if you didn't have a few days worth stored up already locally. Automatic management of this complex distributed system is child's play for computers compared to our stock market where software now does the majority volume of trading.
I also recommend reading about chemical flow batteries which are well suited to this situation as well as looking into the TED talk on a non-flow liquid chemical battery that appears to be totally viable today and supposedly is going to be sold soon.
Parent is correct. Distributed power is a THREAT to centralized power and that is one reason there has been zero interest in technologies that are disruptive-- it is like expecting Microsoft to support Linux.
If every house was partially covered in solar panels we would have a totally different situation that we do today. We wouldn't need wind or nuclear. There would be a demand for power STORAGE so instead of a nuclear plant you would have probably also centralized big corporations which sucked up your cheap solar power and sold it back to you at night. Advances in battery tech and investment in conversion/storage would be much much higher resulting in many side benefits (because research often produces discoveries are were not the goal of the research. Just look how many things come out from "worthless" biological research or space exploration.)
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Can somebody PLEASE find the corporate spy from microsoft working at Mozilla and get them?!
Remove the lawyers. I've often heard the bottom of the ocean is a good start.
Politicians generations back could write simple laws that were short and people could understand. Now we have legal coding that resembles a computer obfuscation contest where even the experts can't understand it. Take the simple banking regulation that prevented the collapse that was what? 4 pages? The new "stronger" one still doesn't do what the old one did and is massive complex and we only have to take somebody's word that it is stronger than the old one despite allowing the practice that caused depressions TWICE. (keep in mind they'll never ever call something a depression again until almost everybody on the street does first.)
The rural areas that are not worth bothering with still need upkeep and it costs more not only because they are less profitable but also because they have more trouble from weather and trees to contend with. Electricity costs more too if you've ever lived or owned a cabin outside of the metro area. I am just fine with removing the fee since those rural people are too smug in thinking they are independent and don't know what welfare actually is despite them getting a disproportionately high amount of it.
I agree that the infrastructure was built so we do not need to be giving them more money. Personally, I don't see why the government doesn't handle the infrastructure instead of playing these stupid money games to have private monopolies rip us off; they DO cost us more in the end especially when we have duopolies which duplicate infrastructure to "compete" and with likely double the subsidies. They do not innovate, they milk; you.
I do not know if the old tanks were fiberglass ones it was sooo long ago when I looked into it - way before this new airpod "car" I never heard of that. I thought they'd get the cat car out the door by now.... Every few years it seems they started over again with a smaller car until this pod thing.
Cheap tanks will do more harm when they blow - but we are STILL talking about a non-combustion non-flammable situation and relatively LOW potential energy. This is not a tank full of a chemical reaction waiting to happen; it is merely a pressure differential. Hauling a propane tank in your car is more dangerous (or having a propane converted car.)
The MDI CAR (the wagon-like 1st car) was a deathtrap of compact car design; the tanks were not the issue, the car was GLUED together and they always had a loud engine problem. They likely will include a small fuel tank as a heater because you can get more from the air by heating it going into the engine.
In 3rd world places without any laws of the roads I think car safety is probably not your biggest worry. If your tanks blow air toward the other driver you might become like the porcupine of the road.
Actually I thought the technology was well suited for small boats where electrics are not so great of an idea. The noise in the water would help too, and air exhaust could be creatively used.
You are only as intelligent in so far as your application of it. Just like US industrial junk food makes it's people unhealthy (among other bad things,) it has spread and infected the world to varying degrees. The psychology that has socially engineered our modern generations Americans has "practical" uses to unethical profit/power seekers elsewhere. It just grew the most quickly in the USA. I'm not saying it hasn't spread elsewhere; but more traditional societies will cling to aspects of their past culture for longer than the USA which doesn't have anything like the national identities of the Europeans.
Anyhow, Americans choose to NOT think except when they are rationalizing their thoughtless actions to appease their ego's believe in their individualism and the cultures irrational extreme position on individualism--- such issues are never investigated it is as difficult as trying to argue religion. TV also makes your brain idle too low for too long while feeding you the natural drugs of escapism and I'm sure that makes people more stupid. Not permanently but willingly inactive. It is more clear if you have no TV and then come back after a decade.
American culture is engineered to be addicted consumers; it was sold as necessary to prevent another depression following the end of WW2 because we had people who didn't consume and not enough demand to create the jobs needed in the transition from an agrarian society. Want and need are really different words but in this new culture the two are practically synonyms. Planned obsolescence is one practical aspect but another is the rise of Fashion in the culture; which is ideal because then your long-lasting products are just undesirable and the owner screws themselves over (and doesn't blame you for making junk - they themselves believe it became junk and its not your fault, it is just OLD.) In the past some twit who shallowly judged people by fashion was a bad characteristic, now it is acceptable (except in the extremes, but such judgements are relative and gradual changes if noticed seem harmless.)
As somebody who stopped reading these long ago I can tell you that they are always more extreme planks than the politicians even ask for when they get into office. It is crafted by the dedicated party members and extreme factions and lobbyists as more of a large mission statement to appease and trick the infighters into rallying behind the chosen one. Why it still works so well on both sides is beyond me. You'd think they'd learn. The press rarely covers the planks-- and there are often 1 or two crazy ones that would harm the candidate forcing them to backtrack from it -- but that upsets some faction they need and after all, politicians give the press MONEY (now in the billions) and neither side would be happy with serious coverage of their planks.
They have no intention of following this - they only throw out a bone come election time or in rare cases are forced to do something and will just as easily leverage the opposition as an excuse for not really doing it. These platform documents rarely happen as written (if you want to get vague then you don't need them because the generalities don't need to be on paper) but of ALL politicians to expect to follow through with it-- Romney? really?? seriously?
Paultards were bought off with a bunch of song and dance from the party insiders they distrust so much. And Ron Paul is retiring because they found a home for his retarded son.
Doesn't anybody remember the leak describing how they were going to destroy wikileaks? They've been doing it.
Wikileaks is being made a negative example of what free press gets for doing it's duty to mankind. It needs to be a positive example and that is enough reason to defend Wikileaks. Furthermore, the illegal and high disregard for the meaning of law (by using twisted technical letters of the law) HARMS everybody going forward not only the press but it terms of how far officials can acceptably abuse the system without repercussions further regresses us back towards despotism.
The CIA deals with this kind of stuff, they plant seeds of discontent within any organization they are fighting-- USSR or now tiny groups where they still have cold-war level budgets but no empire to use them against. Assange probably has relatives who are informants against him. You don't know history if you think the CIA isn't capable of doing a huge amount against such a tiny relatively powerless group. Hell, the classic attack against idealistic movements is to make their leaders into self-serving pigs who put themselves before the cause they lead; nothing causes more internal conflict, demoralization, AND harms recruiting outside support. In this age of celebrity "press" and the US culture of making everybody into some kind of celebrity it practically happens all by itself. They could make a 110% dedicated idealist look like a self-serving celebrity without really trying. Any dedicated activist will leverage the celebrity culture to promote their cause despite knowing it will not help their personal life (surely he didn't think more sex was worth being the single biggest target of the US... If he wasn't well known, he'd be just another one of the RECORD number of journalists the USA "accidentally" killed.)
Me too. We have lock boxes for the remotes but whenever I actually remember the darn thing what I want is not in the box.
IT is underfunded and they seem to have temp student workers as filler for real IT. I had to fight to get external email access which they do not advertize but I knew they had it. They will not turn on IMAP or POP even though I know their server supports it. They had unix systems and now it is all windows crap; including the incorrectly implemented MS DNS server and the occasional issues that causes with it's odd caching scheme. The top IT are real IT staff from industry and while the head guy is a unix person he's given in to using windows because it is cheaper (that is, they don't have to hire somebody who can use a real server.)
Whiteboards smell and it bothers me. Chalk boards were replaced; whiteboards COST more and are more environmental the dust isn't really a problem.
Haven't you heard? All the conservative Christians have since redefined Christian to include Mormons! So anybody who doesn't accept Mormons as Christian simply because modern Mormons changed their minds is an intolerant Christian and probably racist against white people!
I know an evangelical couple who 4 years ago would have protested against a "cultist" (their word) being nominated. My what a difference 4 years of propaganda and a black man can make... some conservatives.
I wonder what they can get them to believe next? Scientology when Tom Cruise runs?
Sad thing is Republicans do not have a sense of irony.
me too. Some politicians have done and some still do what is good for us-- but they are the freaks who manage to get past the two party filter that keeps their kind out of office and usually running in the 3rd party penalty box where they are constantly reminded how "fringe" and unimportant they are.
I see it as a good cop and bad cop routine. Most people fight over which one is the bad cop and are proud of their choice of the good cop. Both are against YOU and they need not like each other to do their jobs.
Nobody remembers seeing CSPAN with all those small government Republicans arguing for the HD transition and how it would boost the economy by making everybody buy new TVs. Then the Dems complaining poor people wouldn't be able to ruin their lives watching TV anymore.
HD standard was stupid too. They could have waited and timed it with mpeg 4 instead of the larger mpeg 2. At least then we'd be using H.263 for broadcast and they could send better error correction because digital error losses are MUCH WORSE than the tiny bit of static analog had. Actually, I've watched things where half the signal was probably lost to static and it still worked well enough - in analog. The format lacks proper audio track support. Don't get me started on the idiotic ratings system - in digital you should be able to bleep and blur out things frame by frame with additional data tracks. A whole industry could be created to provide such services to people privately.
We had to rush in HD because the big media were fearful internet TV would take over and the only thing they had going for them was resolution and their bandwidth advantage. NO! Don't use MP4 we are developing cable boxes to do that! NO! Don't send out a useful TV program guide then we can't sell them program listings. NO! Don't specify a fully universal standard so we can have cable-ready TVs (as usual, it'll be decades before the FCC makes cable signals standard.) The only BIG fight was about the silly broadcast copyright flag because: NO! don't allow modern replacements for VCRs (which the industry tried to kill as well. they delayed TVRs in the USA for years.) Netflix rose to power on demand not because of HD -- if the HD standard was delayed internet TV would be bigger now... and TVs now are getting "smart" we might have had a huge leap forward if we had waited instead of adopting it early. Broadcast TV might be dead (I wish) and instead we may have had that bandwidth used for true broadcast internet protocols - so then you can stream more than just crap local TV over that bandwidth... there are so many game changing things that could be done with that huge amount of premium bandwidth and it could have been retained by the FCC with companies paying for temporary data packet transmission instead of near-permanent frequency monopolies. In MOST areas of the USA the TV bandwidth goes unused - it could be giving us true cell phone broadband.
"Century of the Self" a good documentary which is only an intro to the selfishness of Americans and why they are so gullible and ignorant. From there you can find on your own why they are so unjustifiably confident and optimistic and how that increases failure (including wars.)
FYI, I'm American but somehow I slipped bye being socialized into one of the herd.
Great idea but no contest. Obama's would put forward a Nobel Prize winning Physicist and Romney will only have industry people; as is typically the case for republicans, not that the Democrats do not also have a big problem with choosing the wrong people from industry.
Also, Obama's people get filibustered more than anybody ever has so the people he picks are unlikely to be allowed. Democrats rarely block Republican appointments by comparison. Even Steven Chu would probably be blocked at this point based upon his excellent record. Have you seen the CPAN coverage of the house treating Chu like dirt? The hate in the room is palpable.
A Libertarian will support the corporations WITHOUT bribes. At least the other parties require bribes.
$1 app - why even risk a virus or jailbreak or download hassle
$10 app not valued at $10 - it still might not be worth the effort; but those greedy app developers can motivate somebody to put in more than $10 of their time just out of spite.
If you are going out of business anyway you may as well lower the price before you go under. Stop blaming everybody else except yourself. You don't set your value it doesn't matter what you think your work is worth; the consumers decide that and maybe there is no middle ground and you go out of business, that is life.
The poster and possibly the people who pushed the article up to the top do not understand how many business to business relationships work. This is not consumer relations this is a business customer who is LOCKED IN to a provider critical to their business. They do not get free recall solutions unless it is dirt cheap and even then the fix might be a profitable scam by the supplier.
If you want something even resembling consumer level care you have to make a big stink and threaten lawsuits. That doesn't work plenty of times because they'll have law firms on retainer-- there are plenty of business vs business lawsuits and arbitration that DO NOT involve patent disputes.
Juries can be nailed for a ton of things but are immune from being punished for their verdict. They can have any verdict they want including throwing out the laws in the case or saying the judge is an asshat. The judge can chuck their verdict but can't touch them. Appeals court gets a lot of this stuff so it doesn't matter a whole lot what the jury does.
It is also part of their ego; I know some brown shirts and their whole faith is based upon righteous infallibility -- I mean the faith in the GOP stuff they ditto. These are people who are just as bad on religion but never learned to make the distinction between the two. The GOP purposely has latched onto this confused demographic and purposely conflated matters. Take global warming in Australia, they lost huge progress because marketers succeeded in their (openly professed) strategy to tie anti-global warming conspiracy into the identity of being a conservative. So now you have conservatives who like, want, idealize being conservative feeling compelled to deny reality in order to be themselves!
Maybe you've seen organic versions of the same psychology? Such as Christians who don't think you are christian if you don't believe something they do? (wars have been fought...)
They can't be wrong on anything; the amount of effort they go to avoid it is amazing and imaginative rarely involving logic not because it doesn't exist but because the whole behavior is EMOTIONAL so their reasoning is already shutting down when the topic comes up. Those who can calm down a bit can get some thinking in to recall later-- but try to get somebody who is worked up to reason clearly and see for yourself.
Don't forget the Assange "rape"
Anyone know if Korea is looking to require Open Source in some part of the government? If not, everybody should make the threat when it comes time to upgrade windows...
Public land is heavily used by all ISPs. The ones that connect to your house they use public land to get to your house (the road system) while you could say that is not something that belongs in the discussion because it is not giving them money. I would say that public land which connects everybody together is an EXTREMELY valuable asset and the fact the public owns it is the reason we easily added infrastructure we take for granted. To allow private use of OUR land is a massive huge handout.
Same thing goes to our AIR SPACE over which the radio travels; although, we tend to think of that solely as a regulatory situation.
The fact his example will influence the future of disclosure of truth in our future is reason enough to support his well being. CAN YOUR EGO GET THAT FACT?
1) Ego. An easy attack against anybody who stands up openly to get pounded on by the giant. MLK was attacked in the same way. They all get the attack and it sticks to various degrees depending upon how they come across and what kind of person they are (appearance being most important.) I do not find his Ego any bigger than a newspaper editor (so then it is larger than average. )
2) the US planned to attack wikileaks by undermining its image to supporters; it was leaked. A good smear distorts or reframes the truth. Also, EGO is an old attack that always works well on activist groups. You should know this, right?? Idealistic groups' values system makes ego into a sin or blasphemy against their ideals. You undermine from within as well as their making their outward message look insincere, inauthentic, and self serving. It is the BEST attack for such groups. You don't have to be an expert in the CIA to use or know this (but they are the experts and he falls under their jurisdiction as well as the state dept.)
3) Americans have a simplistic view of political issues. For a democracy, they tend to limit their views to only authoritarian hierarchies! Wikileaks would have a "head ringleader" even if they did not have one. The US media and politicians still have a hard time grasping the occupy movement desperately trying to find some figurehead or make/find 1 volunteer to symbolize as a single representative for the movement. Notice how we always kill the #2 and now #1 man in the boogie man terrorist organization despite it hardly qualifying as an organization; if a terrorist lived he'd probably not know about his promotion until the news reported his death.
4) Wikileaks is a really small organization; much of it is distributed to small players or hidden secret players. Assange has made himself the public face of wikileaks and due to (3 above) he is the #1 target so he gets priority over all the others (leakers are another dept.) Assange HELPS everybody by being the focus of attack and being a good example (being a dick doesn't help anybody; but they were smearing him before he gave them fuel-- works both ways, the USA is trying to make a negative example of him.)
A coward CEO suddenly forgets everything and shifts leadership to diffuse the damage to his peers-- pleading incompetent while still expecting the unjustified salary... Many groups decide who is going to be the fall guy. Assange as the founder/editor is the legal target and he knew it.
5) Surely, a wiseman would realize that nobodies are disappeared and who knows or cares?? As the final decider and founder HE GOES TO JAIL not his PR man. By becoming his own PR man and fostering celebrity status he becomes a known person in our celebrity obsessed culture which protects him as the legal fall guy as well as wikileaks AND it increases exposure as well as humanizing an organization that is bound to be subject to dehumanizing techniques. The WISE move is what he did ego or not. I'm not saying that somebody acting wisely or who is wise will be wise in all their actions for their whole life (or not accused of foolish behavior.) Righteous positions give people great power and it goes to anybody's head at least a little bit.
The DoE and national labs have developed highly effective FLYWHEEL power storage systems. FLYWHEELS are highly effective today and provide short periods of power - when the sun does not come back up then you can worry about buying power from another provider. Most people don't seem to realize the HIGH amount of downtimes their current power stations have and how frequently the grid goes outside their area for power to meet demand; they even go to other companies and other states to buy power. It is a tiny very weak marketplace as it stands today. Many places are designed about double size so they can run half capacity and fix the other half- its more like 2 partially consolidated power plants. With a NEW power grid that is properly designed (and running high volt DC) it would create a marketplace for power--- some sell, others buy at night and sell it back during the day. Many distributed players can get involved.
Nuclear base-power will not be needed as it costs MORE than solar power TODAY and with a cheap grid you can run solar power from multiple states away... that is, if you didn't have a few days worth stored up already locally. Automatic management of this complex distributed system is child's play for computers compared to our stock market where software now does the majority volume of trading.
I also recommend reading about chemical flow batteries which are well suited to this situation as well as looking into the TED talk on a non-flow liquid chemical battery that appears to be totally viable today and supposedly is going to be sold soon.
Parent is correct. Distributed power is a THREAT to centralized power and that is one reason there has been zero interest in technologies that are disruptive-- it is like expecting Microsoft to support Linux.
If every house was partially covered in solar panels we would have a totally different situation that we do today. We wouldn't need wind or nuclear. There would be a demand for power STORAGE so instead of a nuclear plant you would have probably also centralized big corporations which sucked up your cheap solar power and sold it back to you at night. Advances in battery tech and investment in conversion/storage would be much much higher resulting in many side benefits (because research often produces discoveries are were not the goal of the research. Just look how many things come out from "worthless" biological research or space exploration.)