Given how fast the EU has progressed into being a country and how against the will of its people it moves quickly towards a federalized government its really just a game of line drawing - started a few years ago and will continue until we (the majority) write off the opposition for being an insignificant minority opinion.
Most of the world WAS a form of colony to the USA until the powerful who infected the king of nations outgrew their host and decided to start eating it from within. Will the same disease spread to the world... that is the important question to ponder.
I know a retired manager from the USPS and he said its been private for a long time; its not like it used to be. Its not a private corp but its also not a gov agency but an odd hybrid creation which happened during his time there.
I thought from the title "The Golden Age of Infinite Music" was going to be about technology to find and play or even generate music a person would like forever... or something like that. Instead it is basically about consumerism and leads into a tired debate on "property" rights.
So I would like to see something less depressing-- software that removes the need for artists to generate the largely uncreative music that is promoted by the record industry. The death of that industry by AI artistic software. The issues involved when somebody lays claim to the products of their software's random-like output or if it generates something too similar to part of some existing song; having no consciousness to be able to infringe. This could lead into bit streams of data and how silly it is to own one.... or how we decide what is similar etc. leading into the same old tired debates...
The judge is trying to change the guidelines: http://www.usdoj.gov/—s&smanual2002.htm
I forget the court case, but I distinctly remember a case where the result was the "reasonable expectation of privacy" was enough to consider your papers to be private. I am not sure it was supreme court or not that did this. Many older cases without computers do apply to computers; yet for some reason we need to rehash resolved issues because of widespread computer ignorance. My gym locker, car, parking ramp, office desk, etc are now fair game? My papers must reside on my property now?
I remember 5th amendment stuff.. coming from non-computer situations but totally relevant; but this guy decides that email is somehow DIFFERENT than the physical mail services. (BTW, the USPS has gone private which is one reason postage has been constantly going up...) At least if you ENCRYPT email you have supreme court rulings protecting your keys (FISHER v. UNITED STATES) the "Fisher Test."
One could argue that unencrypted insecure access to external systems removes the reasonable expectation of privacy; and therefore makes it publicly accessible in a way, like biometrics which are pubic - in a way. (BTW, biometrics are not private-- don't use them for 'private' keys!) Then you could take stuff like Trash-- if you trash an email, is it private? could they claim digital trash is like physical trash?? (your trash is public once it leaves your property.)
Bush Sr was labeled a wimp. It stuck. Jr seemed to fear that label, when he was a wimp/coward. I won't go into the stuff Sr. did; but Sr wasn't a wimp despite the label.
BTW, skydiving is no big deal. 1st time is the hardest; its as easy as falling out of an airplane! It only SOUNDS impressive to people who've never done it. (yes, I've done it more than once. Not worth the money past the 1st couple of times.)
He wanted to be a jock-- wannabe types are often worse than the real thing. Bush wasn't good enough to be in sports and probably was a wimp like his father. He was a cheerleader because that is the best he could do (and they weren't like the ones of today.) A wimp acting like a strong leader is also worse than the real thing; I don't know why so many people thought he had leadership skills because it was fairly clear he was a wannabe on that as well-- if not also overcompensating for the wimp label of his father; nobody calls Bush Jr a wimp, if they fell for his act.
Try being around lots of kids - doing similar things - it makes it easier to spot when adults do the same thing! Adults are often just more sophisticated more socialized children; similar behaviors and motives but with a better disguise.
Plenty of academics do not produce anything useful in their lifetime according to the popular myopic perspective. The Production / consumption religion is not the world and some people manage to grow up surrounded in it and grow out of it.
Just like the "soft sciences" the results are fuzzy, indirect and often not provable but statistical or inductive at best. Something a few steps removed that is worthless may contribute to something bigger; but all too often people limit themselves on some topics to only directly connected proven tangible products (which are marketable and ranked by profitability.)
The general idea many I've expressed to me: there are a few smart or lucky (inclusive or) ones who do something new or big. The rest do slow plodding grunt work trying to understand the results, describe, test, and nit-pick everything they can because they didn't do something of that caliber. Since many things start out without knowing the results that may come from it-- a lot of people try things hoping to stumble onto something; in which case, a great scientist may not ever find something "useful" other than to show what does not work (which could be useful to others in ways beyond their imagination but not a "valuable product.") This short termed simple thinking led to culture that caused many problems over the last generation (from bridges to banks falling.)
I have talked with plenty who think there is a degradation in education at all levels in different ways. From lack of spacial skills, mechanics, science to the "core" subjects and creativity-- especially a HUGE drop in creativity... to laziness, or the even lack of eugenics. I could easily fill up pages worth on these. I would like to say there is an element of bias to much of it-- old people who've lost realistic memories of their time. That said, I think there is some truth to most of it but to what degree? Personally, I've come to the conclusion it is largely cultural and we contribute to it as we move towards "A Brave New World."
Bean counters are the high priests of corporate run society.
Corporate spies and government spies are intermingling these days; the line is blurred. They even hire each other!
The CIA hires outsiders in part, to get around their limitations. The USA has done tons of stuff militarily and covert for the benefit of its influential corps or corp groups at least since out messing around in South America for food corps. (likely before that, I draw a blank atm.) Its not just the war for oil recent stuff nor is it just 1 party. It doesn't even need to be organized-- plenty of gov employees get access to info useful to corps and want to make an extra buck-- I'm sure that stuff happened plenty and isn't that big a deal to get it curbed much--- most likely it spread into more a organized system. Its not just a conspiracy theory, its a the nature of these systems to produce such conspiracies - the smarter the better they are and the less gets noticed. Its so bad now we have a lobbyist revolving door between congress and industry.
I was into the subject BEFORE most Americans even knew there were computers being used (long story, but my state official just gave me blank looks when I raised concerns after the vendors showed the demo units.)
We don't have a security system that exists which allows for anonymous secure computer voting. NOBODY should be able to find out how YOU voted (including your ISP, browser, OS, government... totally anonymous.)
THE PROBLEM IS SECURITY NOT TECHNOLOGY. I don't mean computer security. I mean public security in their vote, in the process, and the people in charge of running the process. Its NOT a problem of counting, its a problem of TRUST. Multiple attack vectors exist outside of technology which threaten the system-- it is not wise to add more points of attack without removing any (or arguably just a few) of the existing ones. Technology removes transparency to an elite group of experts; of which, only a subset is even allowed to look over the stuff (obviously an expert might tamper with it or steal IP so we can't let just anybody inspect it...) You add more problems than you solve even with a fantasy open source technology without bugs.
For a while, I still thought hashing/signing paper ballot sheets was a good idea but in reality, it means fake cards or bad computers or flawed OCR can take away legit votes. "Solves" ballot stuffing by adding more red-tape ripe for abuse! The best solution is simple CHEAP ballots that are accounted for at all steps. We know general population numbers by census already; low or high all the ballots are accounted for. Its not fool proof but it indicates large abuse and helps track it. Canada has an overall good setup for a primitive non-runoff system from what I've read.
Exit polls work so well that they get it right almost all the time unless it is really close. When exit polls fail you know something happened. Its more important to "look good" than to get it right (well that was the excuse in some places to kill exit polls.) Elections could be called by exit polls and the paper hand count would validate it. Re-votes should be much much easier to do; saves a ton of trouble when things look bad.
Stupid people shouldn't vote; but who decides? We could ban everybody who voted for Bush 04, which would work really well... but someday the winds could still change and you end up filtered out. (Yes, I gave away my bias against recent idiocy; it couldn't have been easier.) What happens when you are the enemy and get somehow market as too stupid? You have to let them all vote. There is a concept known as "the wisdom of the crowd" on which democracy depends upon and would work better if it were not for all the tampering that goes on with the crowd (and situations where mob behavior infects the crowd's sanity - a social virus.)
Election fraud is a treasonous crime and all the related half steps should reflect the severity of this. May not deter many; however, it should prevent them from doing it again if not encourage them to rat out their boss in a plea bargain.
Receipts only make people feel good. No way people are bringing back all those receipts for a recount... which is the only way to have a receipt mean anything. I can give you a receipt for anything you wish....pay me now, I'll send it later...
Eligible voters. big problem: -Criminals can't vote, this is ridiculous. its abused like a poll tax (which we still have in some places - don't believe the legal word games!) You hate all criminals? Then you better vote! -There is a ton done to stop fake votes that complicates that process. Registration is supposed to help but it causes more trouble than it does good. If everybody was required to vote BY LAW or get fined it does make the problem of multiple voting easier to deal with (the extra voters tend to cancel out and many only "show up".) Lazy non-voters help pay for the system. At least they contribute to the society somehow... -Citizenship -Migration between districts - this could be solved with intrusive la
I didn't mean to imply kernel "plug-ins" are slow. FAT has plenty of problems of its own; but the USB flash disk is the bottleneck. I'd honestly like to know why UDF didn't end up on flash instead.
The kernel "hook" should be for Fuse and not multiple implementations for WebDAV, etc. I think the microkernel ideals shouldn't be forgotten-- we don't have to go to the extreme, but we don't have to abandon it either. I want FuseFS support... lots of interesting FS that run under that.
I also find the apple FTP horrid to use and sometimes not functional. I forgot about the NFS use in it; it was a clever way to mimic Fuse using NFS (not literally, it predates Fuse.)
Now days we have speed beyond the needs of most users; I think its a good time to take some performance hits for some usability gains. I would give up speed to never crash (often a driver, yes I'm asking for a driver mem space) or hot swap RAM sticks or upgrade an active disk...
I suppose the time should be put into management of the GPU(s) first: The other issue I notice now is in the GPU powered GUI with all the new GPU offloading lagging the GUI or freezing the GUI. Anybody have ideas how to restart the GUI without logging out? (using a remote shell, unless there is a way to escape.)
This mouse is what I've wanted for YEARS now! Don't know about you, but I've wished for a trackpad stuck on a mouse for over a decade!
I HATE the previous apple mice... except the 90s ones-- they make good garage door openers.
I've got beyond the mouse button phase; in the late 90s I had a 6 button mouse and I had it set for multiple apps too. It was hard on my hand and didn't free me from heavy simultaneous keyboard use. Power users use the keyboard; I am perfectly fine just 1 button. I use the scroll wheels but i do not like to heavily use them. Most of the time I use the keyboard whenever it is possible to be productive.
The thinner the mouse the better as far as I'm concerned. I have a largely 1 cm high mouse now. I often use portable mice as well. I use my fingers and minimize movement on my wrists; the large normal mice are too hard on my wrists; I also don't try to point moving my arm so my mice are really fast in the inch of space it moves within.
If this mouse clicks properly, I'll buy one-- if it works like the previous mouse then I'll have to hope they don't have a silly patent on the trackpad idea.
I built 4 tiny quite capable servers from large lunch boxes and VIA EPIA. I crammed in a good intel server PCI board in there and ran it from 12V power bricks-- redundant too! (its DC, just wire in parallel add diodes.) I ran openBSD on them. hardware SSL acceleration made up for the slower cpus; although, openBSD had issues with a freebsd nfs server not resovled until I retired them. PLENTY fast if you depend on NAS. I wanted to use Apple's minis because they were great-- but only had 1 ethernet connection. I might have used their OS...
Mini servers is a good idea! totally overkill for many tasks... DNS, email, web server... if you have larger loads, then get a bigger box... or make a cluster that still uses less power; that is, if you care about heat and power usage.
Its clearly the rotation screen idea. Those clocks and other gimic 2D displays where a line of LEDs are moved quickly to create a virtual flat surface and a synchronized micro controller figures out what to flash on the LEDs when they "scan" past a point in space. The concept is similar to the old tube TV with electron scans-- but in a way, it is more primitive in that a physical scanning process is involved.
The 3D version is the same concept but has a flat surface screen that rotates on the Z axis. Their photo is a cylinder tube which implies its a rotating screen like all the others of this kind. What is odd, is why they didn't leave the top open-- the earlier designs made the top clear-- and could use a hemisphere to cover it.. I suppose its easier on the bearings and RPM to be supported on both sides of the shaft...
It has serious physical limitations. rotational velocity means screen size must be small and it has to be STRONG (so LED not LCD.) Probably needs 2 screens on the 2D surface to get a good frame rate at a lower RPM. I'm guessing they went for higher RPM in a tube with screens on both sides using surface mount LEDs. (they could have wanted the top just to keep vibration and noise down so it could be made with lower tolerances.)
The reason I do not think it is a mirror like other people is the low resolution of the image-- if they are going to reflect a screen they may as well enlarge it and place a higher quality screen near the center of the shaft where the forces are minimized. Say they do some clever optics with a stationary screen-- the why not use an even better screen?
In the real world, free markets and free trade are not so idealistically wonderful:
1) there is no free market or free trade. its a farce; an ideal goal that can not be reached (and we should question why it should even be a goal.)
2) nations become test beds on how to best "trade" which undermines both freedom and democracy because they get in the way of the bottom line. At a more abstract level, the nation becomes like a corporation; beholden to the shareholders. "Race to the bottom" etc. The more exploited populations win. The "union" forced by outsourcing to concede it's power on this level would be the citizens of a nation. (In the USA, we hate unions; haven't quite got us to hate the voters but we are partway there as well.)
3) The global market is geared towards research on how to convince people to please the bean counters; who despite raised status are easily replaceable by the system which distributes compassion and morality so they are diffused to the point of being inconsequential; just as has routinely occurred in history on smaller scales. In the USA, we went from dreams of 2000 being a time of robots and 30hr work weeks to people working 45+ a week and raised to be more like robots (actually better, because we need consumers to use the products of production; otherwise, what is the point?)
4) The USA didn't get destroyed in WW1 or WW2. BIG head start. 1st world nations and their banks kept 3rd world nations down and exploited them for their own benefit. It is not as simple as the USA going down; it is the others who are catching up. It was the relative difference that was the main advantage. For the USA to stay in its relatively high position it must force down the others; growth is not infinite - there are REAL WORLD LIMITATIONS. I'm not even considering the barriers to growth we have; that is a side issue.
5) power corrupts. more power, more corrupting influences. Globalized systems which allow groups or individuals more power are bound to cause problems at a higher rate and scale than man has ever seen before. (At least the U.N. is weak; its not much of a threat. There is worse stuff out there.) Do we want globally reaching BANKS that can blackmail the world? We've already seen what semi-global banks have done in the USA... Sure, if we are all heavily interlinked merged economies (and by extension many governments too) there will be less chance for old-style wars. We will still have conflicts and possibly more bloody ones with insurgents and terrorists vs police states instead of waring armies. It is still the similar "civilized vs uncivilized" dynamic; but a 'new' game.
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True, if we as a world become more equitable the USA will go down. The world is overpopulated by about 2/3 and that estimate is for a lower standard of living than the USA in regards to individual net worth. So even with 2/3 gone and equity, the USA goes down. This is on multiple levels; we've all heard the stats about how many more planets we need to continue various forms of growth to more populations (or simply maintain existing levels...)
- You've got to be asleep to believe "The American Dream(TM)".
If you break down racing into the separate actions being performed; you can then rank order and think about how to enhance the elements of gameplay that are the most fun.
The most popular racing element of wide appeal is clearly the PASSING and DEFENDING; if you can play ruff and have the control, then "brawling" enhances this dueling aspect. Since bumping and the physics are hard to implement and are not easy to learn to do PLUS limited in scope-- it just begs for more accessible alternatives like oil slicks, weapons, etc. Mario Kart focuses heavily upon this and in nintendo style makes it simple, accessible, and revolves the game around it with balancing and adaptable AI. Its not about winning the race, its about winning the fight for 1st place. Therefore, the AI is perfectly suited to the purpose of the game; therefore, it should NOT adapt.
One could say that people racing in time trials are the complainers who are playing the wrong game; and they are-- but that mode was placed there probably because of those people (or when you're in that mood.) That mode should get an AI that is better suited for that player's intent - which is to race the clock, not brawl. Nintendo leaves out the AI players in this mode; clearly, they understand. Perhaps an option for non-brawling AI players would shut up these people once and for all? I suppose that and a multiplayer mode without weapons...
Cables for a CITY are NOT cheap. The big problem is LABOR and upkeep. BTW, they are on the phone posts not underground (the cost for underground now would be nuts.) Many people complain about the wires we have already. It takes many switching / hub stations to run these networks; they are not cheap or small.
DSL shares the line to other ISPs already. Its not impossible.
TV and radio will go digital; in my area there is talk of putting it inside a IP packet just so they can try to loophole around the local gov "tax" (they use the public's land for their wires, so they pay rent but the contract is vague in wording and might not cover "internet".) TV is now digital and the huge amount of old TV bandwidth is being wasted. anyhow:
Cable is DEAD. DSL is dead. Both corps are fibre now and the phone corp is now getting to the last mile and replacing that copper too (only 4 miles away from my house now! I can't wait!) Comcast by now has all hubs (over here) copper free and will go the last mile after the phone company starts to hurt them with higher speeds. The old last mile is slowly fading out.
Nothing prevents placing a low level of the network under government control; allowing IP packets to be split between ISPs on the network. Or having the switching stations decide which ISP to connect you to. The biggest cost is the last mile, so the gov could handle just the last mile.
I was involved in the local cable commission so I actually know what I'm talking about.
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Bridges: Hey! I often drove down that bridge that fell! The public was cheap on funding roads until just that year WE voted to mandate funds for roads actually goto roads. FYI: The bridge was under construction at the time it fell. It also was a FEDERAL bridge so it wasn't entirely the states responsibility. That having been said, the public hasn't wanted proper upkeep and we get what we deserved (I actually was complaining years beforehand it would take a disaster before we'd fix the bridges.)
Roads are EXPENSIVE especially when you have snow and allow too much weight trucked down it. We built too many fancy roads for what we are willing to maintain. Why? because of property value; upkeep is not sexy.
That having been said, our highway system and roads are some of the best in the world for a nation this spacious. I said FAIR middle man; not perfect. DSL corps are not fair to those who share their lines. Duopolies are not great competition either.
At least my mayor could get fired for screwing something up instead of a failure bonus or pay raise... Government is not some corp like Enron to hate-- government is WE THE PEOPLE.
1) USB flash drives use FAT16 or FAT32 not a Mac OS X filesystem. They are implemented as filesystem plug-ins. USB drives ARE slow; especially when on a slow USB BUS. Me, I have whole USB bus for a time machine SATA drive and it runs as fast as one can expect from that configuration- no complaints.
2) Encrypted "volumes" are disk images; handled in userspace I believe... they are slower; but then they are software encrypted... I get good performance from not using sparse images; the sparse ones are slower (sparse images split the disk into 8MB files for easy resizing.) Sparse files have hash overhead fetching image files, open/closing overhead for those files, HFS+ auto-defragging, the 8MB segments is likely not optimally allocated (linear,) and I think it is quite likely the disk cache working twice.
3) WebDAV generally sucks (iDisk) and I never was a fan of it. still prefer FTP. FTP and WebDAV are both filesystem plug-ins which causes more trouble than they are worth-- not to mention loads a ton of code into the kernel; risking stability and security. Userspace would make MUCH MORE SENSE; especially since the network is the bottleneck not the userspace.
4) HFS+ is a fine filesystem. Sure it is old and based on decades old HFS. It works quite well and is stable. It is simple and highly flexible with easy hacks for adding new features. Its biggest problem is the wasted space for small files; but 10.6 fixes that with a hidden database (everything in HFS is a file, including internal structures.) It can be better; but it is not bad simply because it is old and feature laden.
-- Lets petition Apple to include FuseFS officially in the OS! (then they can move FTP and WebDAV out there and add HTTP, SSH...)
Legitimate markets can have multiple organizations competing for market share. They do not necessarily have to be for excessive profit or could be non-profit even. Some "markets" are monopoly by nature or necessity and so this can not or does not occur. The SOLUTION is an organization that has INTERNAL competition as opposed to external competition.
Monopoly markets are a good place for internal competition since external competition is impossible or impractical.
Democratic government as an organization has its MEMBERS compete for their JOBS because the public is the employer and can fire them-- (they are easier to fire too) and there are TONS of employees waiting to take the job or undermine somebody to get ahead. It has much in common with the inside of a large corporation (except internal fighting can be much more severe.) The basic structure of most corps in an industry is similar; but with different management-- when a party loses power it is similar to changing organizations; since the structure would largely remain the same-- the management team changes and a some workers (the workers often switch between orgs just to get raises in pay already.)
When it does not work-- its OUR FAULT. In the USA, we have lost our power to actually control the organization, the corporate empowered wing of government has taken working control away from the majority stakeholders. It has been hijacked and we have the majority shares but don't organize and exercise our rights. The broken system reflects BAD TOP LEVEL MANAGEMENT and the people are the top management.
People bash and hate government while professing patriotism, democracy, and the rule of law clearly do not understand what they are talking about. I find many of these people are non-intellectual if not anti-intellectual and making them think is exceptionally difficult.
If you believe in democracy, you should believe that government can function when running a monopoly over any "market" the shareholders choose with the competition happening inside the organization. Realistically, we know that too much delegation due to overloading of management, board members, and shareholders causes major problems-- it doesn't scale. Even small governments handle far more issues than most corporations have to deal with. I leave it to somebody else to explain government in corporate terminology so dense people can see the similarities and how conceptually the issues are not all that different. Its not the ideological religion many people make it up to be.
Henry Kissinger degraded the Nobel Prize far far more and a lot sooner than Obama. Kissinger caused trouble every place he got involved in. One could argue he prevented his nutty bosses from WW3.. if that is the case he deserved it.
Allowing the FAKE Nobel prize in economics has degraded the Nobel which NEVER has been or will be for economics, which is more voodoo than science anyhow. The economic one is only Nobel in name, its done by the bank to cleverly promote their economic interests.
Gore deserved his shared one; not an individual one. But Obama getting one now for going around and apologizing for the bush years might have been desperately needed, but it is not enough. Again, I do expect most americans to not realize how much hope the world has been given with Obama sounding like the 1st adult president in a generation. The USA is part of the world who's power and influence is fading; we could fall gracefully like a jet into the Hudson or we could go down in a blaze of glory taking as many down with us as we can... Despite him being a calm pilot, giving him an award before the crash landing is premature. I think this shows how worried people are about the future; they have to promote the one they think will deliver the best result before it is too late. The highlights of news in the USA to the rest the world shows racism, crazy people, neocon "thought," tons of HATE in the opposition who want to go down in on a biblical scale.
What is needed is a TIME LIMIT like the Catholic church does with saints. They wisely had a rule to avoid momentary excitement from trivializing the promotion.
How do you split up a cable line or fibre lines between multiple providers? The best way is to have a shared network where it is split fairly between the providers using the line. The maintainer is payed by the providers using it. This is already done with DSL, cable is not required to do so. Problem is, the DSL owner gets an unfair edge and bandwidth over the other providers despite being required to allow others to use it (and still pay them a use fee.)
The solution should be obvious: A single maintainer handles the lines and spits them at a lower level (frames, packets, or physical bandwidth) and providers then pay a use fee and can all compete evenly with nobody owning the maintainer.
Now some might think a private corp would be good for this-- even though it would still be a monopoly and could abuse the providers using it (who'd get more say than individuals due to our partially broken political system.) I would say the GOVERNMENT should run the monopoly and be accountable to the people. It would lower costs and could run at a loss (investment in local infrastructure to attract business.) This is conceptually the SAME as the roads, water, and sewage in most the USA already. The public right-of-way is what allows interconnections such as roads. Sure we could allow multiple cable wires, power wires, etc cluttering up our public lands but ultimately, that would result in MORE COST to consumers who'd have to pay for all the redundancy. So we grant monopolies and rarely allow multiple grids to be constructed. I've seen too often how government / private monopoly partnerships work; that is to say, they do not work well at all!
I'm NOT saying government run internet (even though they have monitored it already-- being private doesn't help prevent anything.) Government merely becomes the FAIR middle man for others to use the infrastructure, just like the highway system. It would be far better than the DSL owners today who screw the 3rd party providers or cable which has no alternative providers.
Yes, this reasoning can extended into health insurance; but your possible opposition to that sanity doesn't mean you have to attack the whole concept (and by extension water, sewer, power, roads, police, fire, air, etc -- which some fanatics DO already.)
Oh, if your roads, water, sewer suck-- that is YOUR FAULT because you are in charge of it. Stop blaming government like you are not part of it. (assuming you have a democracy-- if your democracy is flawed or a farse, then that is your fault instead.)
Electronics. people don't know jack about electricity. could start as simple as static electricity and giving shocks to people. you could make a van-dagraph from junk.. old soap bottles with paper clips make nice capacitors. then work towards a simple circuit from scratch--- a motor might be a nice idea but a generator / motor would be better-- ties into the 'green' movement; they could power an LED from their hand-made generator and a simple prop placed on it.
Could mess with solar, but the cells cost and are ez to break.
I've seen plenty of "educational" kits out there for doing solar and mini wind generators-- both are jokes but get the point across. The kids are expensive and a WASTE of money because it takes the learning out of it-- those things are no better than assembling a model of something. Actually, assembling a model of something-- as dumb as it is-- does teach motor skills, patience, attention to detail, and spacial relations. My brother is a shop teacher and kids these days have a hard time doing a half decent job assembling simple plastic models -- in high school!
My parents didn't give me money. My brother and I would pool our xmas gifts to get a system. We couldn't work either; if we were going to work, it would have to be at school and not for money to buy crap we didn't need.
Each system only totaled less than a dozen games. We played the hell out of those few games we had. Kids shouldn't have that many games...
Slashdot Mirror
Given how fast the EU has progressed into being a country and how against the will of its people it moves quickly towards a federalized government its really just a game of line drawing - started a few years ago and will continue until we (the majority) write off the opposition for being an insignificant minority opinion.
Most of the world WAS a form of colony to the USA until the powerful who infected the king of nations outgrew their host and decided to start eating it from within. Will the same disease spread to the world... that is the important question to ponder.
I know a retired manager from the USPS and he said its been private for a long time; its not like it used to be. Its not a private corp but its also not a gov agency but an odd hybrid creation which happened during his time there.
So they have some form of Psychosis?
They seem much more like psychopaths to me.
I thought from the title "The Golden Age of Infinite Music" was going to be about technology to find and play or even generate music a person would like forever... or something like that. Instead it is basically about consumerism and leads into a tired debate on "property" rights.
So I would like to see something less depressing-- software that removes the need for artists to generate the largely uncreative music that is promoted by the record industry. The death of that industry by AI artistic software. The issues involved when somebody lays claim to the products of their software's random-like output or if it generates something too similar to part of some existing song; having no consciousness to be able to infringe. This could lead into bit streams of data and how silly it is to own one .... or how we decide what is similar etc. leading into the same old tired debates...
Ok, I didn't RFA. I'm too upset already...
The judge is trying to change the guidelines: http://www.usdoj.gov/—s&smanual2002.htm
I forget the court case, but I distinctly remember a case where the result was the "reasonable expectation of privacy" was enough to consider your papers to be private. I am not sure it was supreme court or not that did this. Many older cases without computers do apply to computers; yet for some reason we need to rehash resolved issues because of widespread computer ignorance.
My gym locker, car, parking ramp, office desk, etc are now fair game? My papers must reside on my property now?
I remember 5th amendment stuff.. coming from non-computer situations but totally relevant; but this guy decides that email is somehow DIFFERENT than the physical mail services. (BTW, the USPS has gone private which is one reason postage has been constantly going up...) At least if you ENCRYPT email you have supreme court rulings protecting your keys (FISHER v. UNITED STATES) the "Fisher Test."
One could argue that unencrypted insecure access to external systems removes the reasonable expectation of privacy; and therefore makes it publicly accessible in a way, like biometrics which are pubic - in a way. (BTW, biometrics are not private-- don't use them for 'private' keys!) Then you could take stuff like Trash-- if you trash an email, is it private? could they claim digital trash is like physical trash?? (your trash is public once it leaves your property.)
Bush Sr was labeled a wimp. It stuck. Jr seemed to fear that label, when he was a wimp/coward. I won't go into the stuff Sr. did; but Sr wasn't a wimp despite the label.
BTW, skydiving is no big deal. 1st time is the hardest; its as easy as falling out of an airplane! It only SOUNDS impressive to people who've never done it. (yes, I've done it more than once. Not worth the money past the 1st couple of times.)
He wanted to be a jock-- wannabe types are often worse than the real thing.
Bush wasn't good enough to be in sports and probably was a wimp like his father. He was a cheerleader because that is the best he could do (and they weren't like the ones of today.)
A wimp acting like a strong leader is also worse than the real thing; I don't know why so many people thought he had leadership skills because it was fairly clear he was a wannabe on that as well-- if not also overcompensating for the wimp label of his father; nobody calls Bush Jr a wimp, if they fell for his act.
Try being around lots of kids - doing similar things - it makes it easier to spot when adults do the same thing! Adults are often just more sophisticated more socialized children; similar behaviors and motives but with a better disguise.
Plenty of academics do not produce anything useful in their lifetime according to the popular myopic perspective. The Production / consumption religion is not the world and some people manage to grow up surrounded in it and grow out of it.
Just like the "soft sciences" the results are fuzzy, indirect and often not provable but statistical or inductive at best. Something a few steps removed that is worthless may contribute to something bigger; but all too often people limit themselves on some topics to only directly connected proven tangible products (which are marketable and ranked by profitability.)
The general idea many I've expressed to me: there are a few smart or lucky (inclusive or) ones who do something new or big. The rest do slow plodding grunt work trying to understand the results, describe, test, and nit-pick everything they can because they didn't do something of that caliber. Since many things start out without knowing the results that may come from it-- a lot of people try things hoping to stumble onto something; in which case, a great scientist may not ever find something "useful" other than to show what does not work (which could be useful to others in ways beyond their imagination but not a "valuable product.")
This short termed simple thinking led to culture that caused many problems over the last generation (from bridges to banks falling.)
I have talked with plenty who think there is a degradation in education at all levels in different ways. From lack of spacial skills, mechanics, science to the "core" subjects and creativity-- especially a HUGE drop in creativity... to laziness, or the even lack of eugenics. I could easily fill up pages worth on these. I would like to say there is an element of bias to much of it-- old people who've lost realistic memories of their time. That said, I think there is some truth to most of it but to what degree? Personally, I've come to the conclusion it is largely cultural and we contribute to it as we move towards "A Brave New World."
Bean counters are the high priests of corporate run society.
I know people who treat their cars more like pets than some people treat their actual pets.
Corporate spies and government spies are intermingling these days; the line is blurred. They even hire each other!
The CIA hires outsiders in part, to get around their limitations. The USA has done tons of stuff militarily and covert for the benefit of its influential corps or corp groups at least since out messing around in South America for food corps. (likely before that, I draw a blank atm.) Its not just the war for oil recent stuff nor is it just 1 party. It doesn't even need to be organized-- plenty of gov employees get access to info useful to corps and want to make an extra buck-- I'm sure that stuff happened plenty and isn't that big a deal to get it curbed much--- most likely it spread into more a organized system. Its not just a conspiracy theory, its a the nature of these systems to produce such conspiracies - the smarter the better they are and the less gets noticed. Its so bad now we have a lobbyist revolving door between congress and industry.
Just 1 man's story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man
I was into the subject BEFORE most Americans even knew there were computers being used (long story, but my state official just gave me blank looks when I raised concerns after the vendors showed the demo units.)
We don't have a security system that exists which allows for anonymous secure computer voting. NOBODY should be able to find out how YOU voted (including your ISP, browser, OS, government... totally anonymous.)
THE PROBLEM IS SECURITY NOT TECHNOLOGY.
I don't mean computer security. I mean public security in their vote, in the process, and the people in charge of running the process.
Its NOT a problem of counting, its a problem of TRUST.
Multiple attack vectors exist outside of technology which threaten the system-- it is not wise to add more points of attack without removing any (or arguably just a few) of the existing ones. Technology removes transparency to an elite group of experts; of which, only a subset is even allowed to look over the stuff (obviously an expert might tamper with it or steal IP so we can't let just anybody inspect it...) You add more problems than you solve even with a fantasy open source technology without bugs.
For a while, I still thought hashing/signing paper ballot sheets was a good idea but in reality, it means fake cards or bad computers or flawed OCR can take away legit votes. "Solves" ballot stuffing by adding more red-tape ripe for abuse! The best solution is simple CHEAP ballots that are accounted for at all steps. We know general population numbers by census already; low or high all the ballots are accounted for. Its not fool proof but it indicates large abuse and helps track it. Canada has an overall good setup for a primitive non-runoff system from what I've read.
Exit polls work so well that they get it right almost all the time unless it is really close. When exit polls fail you know something happened. Its more important to "look good" than to get it right (well that was the excuse in some places to kill exit polls.) Elections could be called by exit polls and the paper hand count would validate it. Re-votes should be much much easier to do; saves a ton of trouble when things look bad.
Stupid people shouldn't vote; but who decides? We could ban everybody who voted for Bush 04, which would work really well... but someday the winds could still change and you end up filtered out. (Yes, I gave away my bias against recent idiocy; it couldn't have been easier.) What happens when you are the enemy and get somehow market as too stupid? You have to let them all vote. There is a concept known as "the wisdom of the crowd" on which democracy depends upon and would work better if it were not for all the tampering that goes on with the crowd (and situations where mob behavior infects the crowd's sanity - a social virus.)
Election fraud is a treasonous crime and all the related half steps should reflect the severity of this. May not deter many; however, it should prevent them from doing it again if not encourage them to rat out their boss in a plea bargain.
Receipts only make people feel good. No way people are bringing back all those receipts for a recount... which is the only way to have a receipt mean anything. I can give you a receipt for anything you wish....pay me now, I'll send it later...
Eligible voters. big problem:
-Criminals can't vote, this is ridiculous. its abused like a poll tax (which we still have in some places - don't believe the legal word games!) You hate all criminals? Then you better vote!
-There is a ton done to stop fake votes that complicates that process. Registration is supposed to help but it causes more trouble than it does good. If everybody was required to vote BY LAW or get fined it does make the problem of multiple voting easier to deal with (the extra voters tend to cancel out and many only "show up".) Lazy non-voters help pay for the system. At least they contribute to the society somehow...
-Citizenship
-Migration between districts - this could be solved with intrusive la
I didn't mean to imply kernel "plug-ins" are slow. FAT has plenty of problems of its own; but the USB flash disk is the bottleneck. I'd honestly like to know why UDF didn't end up on flash instead.
The kernel "hook" should be for Fuse and not multiple implementations for WebDAV, etc.
I think the microkernel ideals shouldn't be forgotten-- we don't have to go to the extreme, but we don't have to abandon it either.
I want FuseFS support... lots of interesting FS that run under that.
I also find the apple FTP horrid to use and sometimes not functional. I forgot about the NFS use in it; it was a clever way to mimic Fuse using NFS (not literally, it predates Fuse.)
Now days we have speed beyond the needs of most users; I think its a good time to take some performance hits for some usability gains. I would give up speed to never crash (often a driver, yes I'm asking for a driver mem space) or hot swap RAM sticks or upgrade an active disk...
I suppose the time should be put into management of the GPU(s) first: The other issue I notice now is in the GPU powered GUI with all the new GPU offloading lagging the GUI or freezing the GUI. Anybody have ideas how to restart the GUI without logging out? (using a remote shell, unless there is a way to escape.)
This mouse is what I've wanted for YEARS now! Don't know about you, but I've wished for a trackpad stuck on a mouse for over a decade!
I HATE the previous apple mice... except the 90s ones-- they make good garage door openers.
I've got beyond the mouse button phase; in the late 90s I had a 6 button mouse and I had it set for multiple apps too. It was hard on my hand and didn't free me from heavy simultaneous keyboard use. Power users use the keyboard; I am perfectly fine just 1 button. I use the scroll wheels but i do not like to heavily use them. Most of the time I use the keyboard whenever it is possible to be productive.
The thinner the mouse the better as far as I'm concerned. I have a largely 1 cm high mouse now. I often use portable mice as well. I use my fingers and minimize movement on my wrists; the large normal mice are too hard on my wrists; I also don't try to point moving my arm so my mice are really fast in the inch of space it moves within.
If this mouse clicks properly, I'll buy one-- if it works like the previous mouse then I'll have to hope they don't have a silly patent on the trackpad idea.
I built 4 tiny quite capable servers from large lunch boxes and VIA EPIA. I crammed in a good intel server PCI board in there and ran it from 12V power bricks-- redundant too! (its DC, just wire in parallel add diodes.) I ran openBSD on them. hardware SSL acceleration made up for the slower cpus; although, openBSD had issues with a freebsd nfs server not resovled until I retired them. PLENTY fast if you depend on NAS. I wanted to use Apple's minis because they were great-- but only had 1 ethernet connection. I might have used their OS...
Mini servers is a good idea! totally overkill for many tasks... DNS, email, web server... if you have larger loads, then get a bigger box... or make a cluster that still uses less power; that is, if you care about heat and power usage.
Its clearly the rotation screen idea. Those clocks and other gimic 2D displays where a line of LEDs are moved quickly to create a virtual flat surface and a synchronized micro controller figures out what to flash on the LEDs when they "scan" past a point in space. The concept is similar to the old tube TV with electron scans-- but in a way, it is more primitive in that a physical scanning process is involved.
The 3D version is the same concept but has a flat surface screen that rotates on the Z axis. Their photo is a cylinder tube which implies its a rotating screen like all the others of this kind. What is odd, is why they didn't leave the top open-- the earlier designs made the top clear-- and could use a hemisphere to cover it.. I suppose its easier on the bearings and RPM to be supported on both sides of the shaft...
It has serious physical limitations. rotational velocity means screen size must be small and it has to be STRONG (so LED not LCD.) Probably needs 2 screens on the 2D surface to get a good frame rate at a lower RPM. I'm guessing they went for higher RPM in a tube with screens on both sides using surface mount LEDs. (they could have wanted the top just to keep vibration and noise down so it could be made with lower tolerances.)
The reason I do not think it is a mirror like other people is the low resolution of the image-- if they are going to reflect a screen they may as well enlarge it and place a higher quality screen near the center of the shaft where the forces are minimized. Say they do some clever optics with a stationary screen-- the why not use an even better screen?
In the real world, free markets and free trade are not so idealistically wonderful:
1) there is no free market or free trade. its a farce; an ideal goal that can not be reached (and we should question why it should even be a goal.)
2) nations become test beds on how to best "trade" which undermines both freedom and democracy because they get in the way of the bottom line. At a more abstract level, the nation becomes like a corporation; beholden to the shareholders. "Race to the bottom" etc. The more exploited populations win. The "union" forced by outsourcing to concede it's power on this level would be the citizens of a nation. (In the USA, we hate unions; haven't quite got us to hate the voters but we are partway there as well.)
3) The global market is geared towards research on how to convince people to please the bean counters; who despite raised status are easily replaceable by the system which distributes compassion and morality so they are diffused to the point of being inconsequential; just as has routinely occurred in history on smaller scales. In the USA, we went from dreams of 2000 being a time of robots and 30hr work weeks to people working 45+ a week and raised to be more like robots (actually better, because we need consumers to use the products of production; otherwise, what is the point?)
4) The USA didn't get destroyed in WW1 or WW2. BIG head start. 1st world nations and their banks kept 3rd world nations down and exploited them for their own benefit. It is not as simple as the USA going down; it is the others who are catching up. It was the relative difference that was the main advantage. For the USA to stay in its relatively high position it must force down the others; growth is not infinite - there are REAL WORLD LIMITATIONS. I'm not even considering the barriers to growth we have; that is a side issue.
5) power corrupts. more power, more corrupting influences. Globalized systems which allow groups or individuals more power are bound to cause problems at a higher rate and scale than man has ever seen before. (At least the U.N. is weak; its not much of a threat. There is worse stuff out there.) Do we want globally reaching BANKS that can blackmail the world? We've already seen what semi-global banks have done in the USA... Sure, if we are all heavily interlinked merged economies (and by extension many governments too) there will be less chance for old-style wars. We will still have conflicts and possibly more bloody ones with insurgents and terrorists vs police states instead of waring armies. It is still the similar "civilized vs uncivilized" dynamic; but a 'new' game.
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True, if we as a world become more equitable the USA will go down. The world is overpopulated by about 2/3 and that estimate is for a lower standard of living than the USA in regards to individual net worth. So even with 2/3 gone and equity, the USA goes down. This is on multiple levels; we've all heard the stats about how many more planets we need to continue various forms of growth to more populations (or simply maintain existing levels...)
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You've got to be asleep to believe "The American Dream(TM)".
Mod parent up! touchy moderators....
If you break down racing into the separate actions being performed; you can then rank order and think about how to enhance the elements of gameplay that are the most fun.
The most popular racing element of wide appeal is clearly the PASSING and DEFENDING; if you can play ruff and have the control, then "brawling" enhances this dueling aspect. Since bumping and the physics are hard to implement and are not easy to learn to do PLUS limited in scope-- it just begs for more accessible alternatives like oil slicks, weapons, etc. Mario Kart focuses heavily upon this and in nintendo style makes it simple, accessible, and revolves the game around it with balancing and adaptable AI. Its not about winning the race, its about winning the fight for 1st place. Therefore, the AI is perfectly suited to the purpose of the game; therefore, it should NOT adapt.
One could say that people racing in time trials are the complainers who are playing the wrong game; and they are-- but that mode was placed there probably because of those people (or when you're in that mood.) That mode should get an AI that is better suited for that player's intent - which is to race the clock, not brawl. Nintendo leaves out the AI players in this mode; clearly, they understand. Perhaps an option for non-brawling AI players would shut up these people once and for all? I suppose that and a multiplayer mode without weapons...
Cables for a CITY are NOT cheap. The big problem is LABOR and upkeep. BTW, they are on the phone posts not underground (the cost for underground now would be nuts.) Many people complain about the wires we have already. It takes many switching / hub stations to run these networks; they are not cheap or small.
DSL shares the line to other ISPs already. Its not impossible.
TV and radio will go digital; in my area there is talk of putting it inside a IP packet just so they can try to loophole around the local gov "tax" (they use the public's land for their wires, so they pay rent but the contract is vague in wording and might not cover "internet".) TV is now digital and the huge amount of old TV bandwidth is being wasted. anyhow:
Cable is DEAD. DSL is dead. Both corps are fibre now and the phone corp is now getting to the last mile and replacing that copper too (only 4 miles away from my house now! I can't wait!) Comcast by now has all hubs (over here) copper free and will go the last mile after the phone company starts to hurt them with higher speeds. The old last mile is slowly fading out.
Nothing prevents placing a low level of the network under government control; allowing IP packets to be split between ISPs on the network. Or having the switching stations decide which ISP to connect you to. The biggest cost is the last mile, so the gov could handle just the last mile.
I was involved in the local cable commission so I actually know what I'm talking about.
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Bridges:
Hey! I often drove down that bridge that fell! The public was cheap on funding roads until just that year WE voted to mandate funds for roads actually goto roads. FYI: The bridge was under construction at the time it fell. It also was a FEDERAL bridge so it wasn't entirely the states responsibility. That having been said, the public hasn't wanted proper upkeep and we get what we deserved (I actually was complaining years beforehand it would take a disaster before we'd fix the bridges.)
Roads are EXPENSIVE especially when you have snow and allow too much weight trucked down it. We built too many fancy roads for what we are willing to maintain. Why? because of property value; upkeep is not sexy.
That having been said, our highway system and roads are some of the best in the world for a nation this spacious.
I said FAIR middle man; not perfect. DSL corps are not fair to those who share their lines. Duopolies are not great competition either.
At least my mayor could get fired for screwing something up instead of a failure bonus or pay raise...
Government is not some corp like Enron to hate-- government is WE THE PEOPLE.
1) USB flash drives use FAT16 or FAT32 not a Mac OS X filesystem. They are implemented as filesystem plug-ins. USB drives ARE slow; especially when on a slow USB BUS. Me, I have whole USB bus for a time machine SATA drive and it runs as fast as one can expect from that configuration- no complaints.
2) Encrypted "volumes" are disk images; handled in userspace I believe... they are slower; but then they are software encrypted... I get good performance from not using sparse images; the sparse ones are slower (sparse images split the disk into 8MB files for easy resizing.) Sparse files have hash overhead fetching image files, open/closing overhead for those files, HFS+ auto-defragging, the 8MB segments is likely not optimally allocated (linear,) and I think it is quite likely the disk cache working twice.
3) WebDAV generally sucks (iDisk) and I never was a fan of it. still prefer FTP. FTP and WebDAV are both filesystem plug-ins which causes more trouble than they are worth-- not to mention loads a ton of code into the kernel; risking stability and security. Userspace would make MUCH MORE SENSE; especially since the network is the bottleneck not the userspace.
4) HFS+ is a fine filesystem. Sure it is old and based on decades old HFS. It works quite well and is stable. It is simple and highly flexible with easy hacks for adding new features. Its biggest problem is the wasted space for small files; but 10.6 fixes that with a hidden database (everything in HFS is a file, including internal structures.) It can be better; but it is not bad simply because it is old and feature laden.
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Lets petition Apple to include FuseFS officially in the OS! (then they can move FTP and WebDAV out there and add HTTP, SSH...)
Legitimate markets can have multiple organizations competing for market share. They do not necessarily have to be for excessive profit or could be non-profit even. Some "markets" are monopoly by nature or necessity and so this can not or does not occur. The SOLUTION is an organization that has INTERNAL competition as opposed to external competition.
Monopoly markets are a good place for internal competition since external competition is impossible or impractical.
Democratic government as an organization has its MEMBERS compete for their JOBS because the public is the employer and can fire them-- (they are easier to fire too) and there are TONS of employees waiting to take the job or undermine somebody to get ahead. It has much in common with the inside of a large corporation (except internal fighting can be much more severe.) The basic structure of most corps in an industry is similar; but with different management-- when a party loses power it is similar to changing organizations; since the structure would largely remain the same-- the management team changes and a some workers (the workers often switch between orgs just to get raises in pay already.)
When it does not work-- its OUR FAULT. In the USA, we have lost our power to actually control the organization, the corporate empowered wing of government has taken working control away from the majority stakeholders. It has been hijacked and we have the majority shares but don't organize and exercise our rights. The broken system reflects BAD TOP LEVEL MANAGEMENT and the people are the top management.
People bash and hate government while professing patriotism, democracy, and the rule of law clearly do not understand what they are talking about. I find many of these people are non-intellectual if not anti-intellectual and making them think is exceptionally difficult.
If you believe in democracy, you should believe that government can function when running a monopoly over any "market" the shareholders choose with the competition happening inside the organization. Realistically, we know that too much delegation due to overloading of management, board members, and shareholders causes major problems-- it doesn't scale. Even small governments handle far more issues than most corporations have to deal with. I leave it to somebody else to explain government in corporate terminology so dense people can see the similarities and how conceptually the issues are not all that different. Its not the ideological religion many people make it up to be.
Henry Kissinger degraded the Nobel Prize far far more and a lot sooner than Obama. Kissinger caused trouble every place he got involved in. One could argue he prevented his nutty bosses from WW3.. if that is the case he deserved it.
Allowing the FAKE Nobel prize in economics has degraded the Nobel which NEVER has been or will be for economics, which is more voodoo than science anyhow. The economic one is only Nobel in name, its done by the bank to cleverly promote their economic interests.
Gore deserved his shared one; not an individual one. But Obama getting one now for going around and apologizing for the bush years might have been desperately needed, but it is not enough.
Again, I do expect most americans to not realize how much hope the world has been given with Obama sounding like the 1st adult president in a generation. The USA is part of the world who's power and influence is fading; we could fall gracefully like a jet into the Hudson or we could go down in a blaze of glory taking as many down with us as we can... Despite him being a calm pilot, giving him an award before the crash landing is premature. I think this shows how worried people are about the future; they have to promote the one they think will deliver the best result before it is too late. The highlights of news in the USA to the rest the world shows racism, crazy people, neocon "thought," tons of HATE in the opposition who want to go down in on a biblical scale.
What is needed is a TIME LIMIT like the Catholic church does with saints. They wisely had a rule to avoid momentary excitement from trivializing the promotion.
How do you split up a cable line or fibre lines between multiple providers? The best way is to have a shared network where it is split fairly between the providers using the line. The maintainer is payed by the providers using it. This is already done with DSL, cable is not required to do so. Problem is, the DSL owner gets an unfair edge and bandwidth over the other providers despite being required to allow others to use it (and still pay them a use fee.)
The solution should be obvious:
A single maintainer handles the lines and spits them at a lower level (frames, packets, or physical bandwidth) and providers then pay a use fee and can all compete evenly with nobody owning the maintainer.
Now some might think a private corp would be good for this-- even though it would still be a monopoly and could abuse the providers using it (who'd get more say than individuals due to our partially broken political system.) I would say the GOVERNMENT should run the monopoly and be accountable to the people. It would lower costs and could run at a loss (investment in local infrastructure to attract business.) This is conceptually the SAME as the roads, water, and sewage in most the USA already. The public right-of-way is what allows interconnections such as roads. Sure we could allow multiple cable wires, power wires, etc cluttering up our public lands but ultimately, that would result in MORE COST to consumers who'd have to pay for all the redundancy. So we grant monopolies and rarely allow multiple grids to be constructed. I've seen too often how government / private monopoly partnerships work; that is to say, they do not work well at all!
I'm NOT saying government run internet (even though they have monitored it already-- being private doesn't help prevent anything.) Government merely becomes the FAIR middle man for others to use the infrastructure, just like the highway system. It would be far better than the DSL owners today who screw the 3rd party providers or cable which has no alternative providers.
Yes, this reasoning can extended into health insurance; but your possible opposition to that sanity doesn't mean you have to attack the whole concept (and by extension water, sewer, power, roads, police, fire, air, etc -- which some fanatics DO already.)
Oh, if your roads, water, sewer suck-- that is YOUR FAULT because you are in charge of it. Stop blaming government like you are not part of it. (assuming you have a democracy-- if your democracy is flawed or a farse, then that is your fault instead.)
Electronics. people don't know jack about electricity. could start as simple as static electricity and giving shocks to people. you could make a van-dagraph from junk.. old soap bottles with paper clips make nice capacitors. then work towards a simple circuit from scratch--- a motor might be a nice idea but a generator / motor would be better-- ties into the 'green' movement; they could power an LED from their hand-made generator and a simple prop placed on it.
Could mess with solar, but the cells cost and are ez to break.
I've seen plenty of "educational" kits out there for doing solar and mini wind generators-- both are jokes but get the point across. The kids are expensive and a WASTE of money because it takes the learning out of it-- those things are no better than assembling a model of something. Actually, assembling a model of something-- as dumb as it is-- does teach motor skills, patience, attention to detail, and spacial relations. My brother is a shop teacher and kids these days have a hard time doing a half decent job assembling simple plastic models -- in high school!
My parents didn't give me money. My brother and I would pool our xmas gifts to get a system. We couldn't work either; if we were going to work, it would have to be at school and not for money to buy crap we didn't need.
Each system only totaled less than a dozen games. We played the hell out of those few games we had. Kids shouldn't have that many games...