I have to agree with him about what he said.
He never said it was legal to download stuff, he said it was not prima-facia illegal to download something that is copyrighted.
Any company can make a profit without giving good value for what you pay. (For example sell chocalate at $500 per ounce as a new "wonder vitamin" - until people catch on you will make a ton of cash.) But eventually people DO realize what they are doing, stop paying them and they go out of business. For that reason, companies must be "fair" (as defined above) or rely entirely on new business and even then eventually close down as word gets around.
"I gave my credit card number to this web site selling cooking books, and now the web site is closed and I got a virus that downloads porn and tries to send the porn to the IP address of the closed website"
There are two ways to look at this buiseness model:
1) They are "punishing" the people that make the most use of their service, rewarding those that make the least use. Considering they charge the same amount of money either way, it sounds like a good idea to me.
2) They are catering to two entirely different clientel: Set A) that watch a ton of movies,
Set B) That watch only a few movies. Set A pays the same as set B but gets more quantity at the cost of less quality.
Either way, it sounds like a GOOD, FAIR, business plan to me.
What, you think they do not know everything you just said????
Basically, your entire arguement requires for Farmers to buy seed that will destroy their own ability to reseed and also destroy the ability of their neighbors to reseed.
So, according to your logic, only a TOTAL and complete MORON would buy their seed.
Farmers are not stupid. If you have given a fair and honest representation of what is going on, then no farmer will buy this seed, it will only be used for experimental stuff.
The only way for the seed to be purchased is if you are SERIOUSLY wrong about what is going on.
The article said it best when it said it sounded prejudiced.
The most stuspicious thing about their study was that they tested volunteers, not a random sampling.
I know if they put out a call to test 3d modeling, a WHOLE bunch of game addicted, technophile guys would run to sign up. If their female sample was motivated by other factors, they might not have hade as much XP with 3d modeling software. If the guys had a ton more experience with 3d modeling, that would certainly explain the difference, and the fact that the difference went away with larger, clearer screens.
We have the technology today to offer cheap access to space. Theoretically, an Orion Starship costs only around $1,000 / pound to get there. But NASA decided that building a spaceship that uses small nuclear bombs as it's propulsion unit is a bad idea.
Look, we have not had space travel for more than 50 years yet.
Give us another 100 years, and we WILL have cheap spacetravel.
If we do it right, we might be able to make it cheap in 50 more years.
The world has tried multiple legs a lot. Evolution tested it, and generally found it lacking. Yes, for smaller creatures it has some advantages, but frankly it is not worth it for larger creatures. For most things, if any other animal has it and we do not, then it is not a significant change (with the exception of sex and other culture effecting things).
In general, most people make the following major mistakes when thinking about what is signigicant:
Brawn. Humans rule the world by virture of our brain. Intelligence and culture is FAR more important than Brawn.
Strange looking. Strange appearance is not that significant. A human with an extra arm etc. is not a big deal, it is still human.
Significant differences would be:
Truly NEW 'powers' - Super power type stuff, surviving in a vacuum, able to live for more than 150 years, telepathy, etc.
Sexual changes. Our culture is heavily molded by our sex lives. If we started up something where women did not need men to reproduce, that would cause MAJOR social upheaval.
Intelligence modification.
Dominance/Submission control (making people more/less likely to argue with authority)
Your logic is SERIOUSLY flawed there, and your description makes the Termiantor wheat a PERFECT wheat for experimentation.
Why your logic is flawed:
If I plant terminator wheat where it will pollinate other people's wheat, that means my wheat will ALSO be pollinated by their wheat.
So I would be STUPID to do that, as my own wheat will end up STERILE.
The only way this works like you are scared of is if the MAJORITY of people are already using the Terminator Wheat, then people would be stuck with using the it. If most people start out using regular Wheat, you have to be a moron to buy the terminator wheat.
However, let us say I have some experimental gene that I do not want to get out to the general wheat fields. I implant that gean in the Terminator wheat to grow a crop for testing. I do not need to worry about some of my pollen being wafted over to your field, as even if you get a tiny bit, it will be sterile, so one generation later it will be gone.
First of all, let me explain, that this is my life we are talking about.
I have an overactive immune system that attacks my own kidneys. It could kill me in about 10 years. (I am in my 30's).
Kidney transplants from family/etc. might help, but the real problem is that my immune system attacks my OWN kidneys, so you see the problem. Immunosupressant drugs are dangerous, leave me open to disease, and are not 100% effective. I end up with a weak immune system that still damages my kidneys a little bit.
The best hope for saving my life is genetic research into cloning kidneys from my own body, and then implanting healthier, younger kidneys into me. This is barely within our technological grasp, if we make it a priority. Dolly made you wonder, but it gave me hope.
That said, I do not consider Genetic manipulation of Human beings to be changing the species.
First of all, evolution is VERY effective. Any changes we make will be relatively minor. Our only real advantage over Evolution is speed.
Instead of NEW species, we will be making new "races" as in black vs. white, etc. etc.
It will take hundreds of years of actual evolution (living on seperate planets) to differentiate us enough to declare the new races new species.s
But we will end with a more vaired set of intelligent human races.
It is theoretically possible for us to build a ship capable of holding 100 people and send them to Alpha Centauri and back, using known technology, in less than 50 years. That means some may die of old age, but we should get some survivors.
The secret is to use Orion Drives (Drop nuclear bomb behind space ship, explode bomb, repeat. Slignshot around the star instead of wasting Delta-V to stop and turn around.)
Of course, that project is a bit longer term than most we do, would be INCREDIABLLY expensive and scare too many people (Ralph Nader : "You are using WHAT for fuel?")
The problem of astronauts being weakened by space travel would be far less important as the few survivors would be old by the time they returned.
If they found a habitable planet, then they could radio back, and by the time they returned to earth, Alpha Centauri would be colonized.
1) You clearly do NOT know enough about space travel, radiation. It is FAR easier to block than you think. among other things, we can generate Magnetic fields that are just as powerfull as the van allen belt.
2) You are pretty stupid if you do not realize what Alpha Centauri gets us. The most expensive thing most people buy is REAL ESTATE. Alpha Centauri is actually just the first stop on the road to finding inhabitable planets. Most intelligent people understand that. There is probably not habitable real estate on Alpha, but there might be. OK, forget about Habitable real estate, as you are clearly of the "can't be done" crowd. That real estate is full of nice things like GOLD, DIAMONDS, and lots of other extremely valuable minerals. Yes, Alph Centauri is a long way to go, we can probably start at the Asteroid belts.
You also appear to think that science is generally funded. There is nothing prevented people from funding the kind of medical research you want to - if the space funding went away, that money would NOT be transfered to the things you want, it would instead cancel the national debt. There is no choice that you think there is. P.S. If the things you felt needed funding were actually worthy of funding, we could afford them ON TOP of the space funding.
Did you pay any attention to my anti-terrorist arugement? Scientist are not switchable. They have already been trained by the US, Russians and the Chinese, and the Europeans to be Rocket Scientists. Anyone that would be tempted to develop missile rocket technology for Terrorists/evil doers WOULD NOT trade that in for the low end engineering crap jobs that you want them to take. P.S. If you knew ANYTHING about environmental science you would know that the greenhouse effect is currently a GOOD thing. Officially we are in the middle of an Ice Age right now. Yes, an Ice Age. It might be the warmer section of an Ice Age, but it is an Ice Age. While Global Warming is a REAL danger for the future, (if it keeps up we will end up a hot house with flooding and excess CO2), but right now it keeps the Ice Age that we are STILL IN from turning manhattan into a Glacier. The crap you suggest is a recipee for disater.
We do have a SERIOUS budget problem right now. In the US, we even know the cause. Bush took over the White House, cut taxes, and got invovled in several wars. Before that happened, we had money out the yin-yan and people were arguing about what to do with it. Space agencey had NOTHING to do with it. In addition, we CAN educate out children and give them books, the States just choose NOT to do that - they base education money on real estate taxes for no reason what so ever.
Stupid people do deserve jobs, but you are NOT trying to give them jobs. You are trying to take JOBS from smart people to pay stupid people not to work.
We are not trying to build "Toys" Toys do not do things. You may think our machines do not do something YOU want done, but they are clearly working devices that accomplish very difficult tasks. Your mention of the word Toy and everything around it is what is called an INSULT, not an argument. Try again.
We are NOT re-altering the priorities. They already exist. YOU are the person that wants to change the prioritise. I do not have to romanticize space travel, our society did that LONG before I was borne. Space travel is ROMANTIC. Period. But that is NOT why I want us to go. "Because it's there" is an intelligent response to people that just don't get it. Space Travel will take us to WHOLE NEW PLANETS. Since your "practical", unromantic view needs an economic justification, think of all the high end metals, etc. etc. we can get from those planets.
If you want to be a politician, you study the laws. Having a Law degree does NOT make you a lawyer - praciticing law makes you a lawyer.
And if they had mainly asked lawyers about the DMCA, they would have got a much weaker law - most lawyers realize it is a tad close to violating previos laws.
Make work only happens when you do not have ENOUGH work. Like I said before, Lawyers do not need to make work, there are so manypeople out there trying to sue for things like "McDonald's made me fat" that they do not need make work.
I do agree that we have too much lawyering going on. In my opinion that is because:
We let people sue for anything with pretty much no penalty. In my opinion, legal fee structures need to be regulated (No working on a case that no one has paid you any money for in hopes of cashing in on the settlement - a minimum of $1,000 or 1% of your clients last year tax payment, whichever is less, no charging more than 5% of the settlement).
Contracts involving an individual instead of just between two or more companies, should be legally limited to one page or less, excluding references to generic subclauses created by the legislature. Scrapping the custom creation of contracts would get rid of 95% of the crap that companies pull.
I work for an "evil" law firm.
I hate to tell you, but everything you said is a bunch of anti-lawyer stupidity.
None of it is true.
1) Lawyers did not "write" the law, politicians did. Yes, they had some lawyers advice, but NO more than any other law. Most of the advice came from Media Companys, not Lawyers.
2) Lawyers LOVE to challenge laws. Getting a law thrown out is like an A+. Yes, some will protect it, but I GURANTEE, that for every lawyer trying to keep this law, there will be at least one trying to evade it/kill it.
3) Trust me, coporate lawyers do NOT need "makework" They have more than enough low end work. This stuff will never pay enough to lawyers to make them rich, it is junk that they do not want.
This law was created by the Media companies, for the media companies. Lawyers had little to do wit it.
OK, Honda makes millions of cars, so that is less than 1 british pound per car.
You just saved that much.
OOPS. you just lost 50 sales. There goes your profit.
Yes those are problems, but they are FAR from major. Radiation can be shielded against (Water does that well). We are making MAJOR progress in countering the weightless breakdown - Drugs like Fosomax (bone protector) and significnat exercise do work.
You have to be pretty inane to htink that a mere 500 days will drive people insane. Members of several sailing expeditions have travelled well over 1 year together without that kind of problem. Yes if they choose a black man and a member of the KKK they will have a problem, but we are not stupid enough to do that.
As to why we are going to mars, there are lots of GREAT reasons. Here area few:
Because it is there.
To further develop our manned space craft, so that eventually we will know enough to get a ship to Alpha Centauri.
To further develop our medical science so that we no longer have ANY problem with space travel.
To pay the smart people a ton of money to build something positive, instead of having them be unemployed and jobless when the terrorist asks them to use their rocket science to build something.
To give money to SMART people letting them leave lesser jobs. Where upon, slighlty less smart people will be hired to fill those jobs, (after they quit their old jobs - so even less capable people are hired to fill those old jobs etc. etc. etc) Trickle down does work when you are talking about JOBS, (as opposed to money.)
You see, when you spend money on a Science project, the money is spent on EARTH, even if the science is off Earth. This means you are WRONG, trips to mars DOES feed, clothe and house people and it DOES work it's way down to the guy on 32nd and Main under a box, if he is at least willing to try and work.
Mars is a good target because it is just barely within our reach. Once we get there, then we can try for the moons of Jupiter. After that Pluto. Then Alpha Centauri here we come!
No. You are assuming WAY to much.
A better way to say it is:
In short it is possible, but using the relatively insensitive machines that were proposed once before, without changing the specs of the power currently being transferd, the signal would have to be so strong that the electricity grid would radiate excessively, And the proposed means of shielding that raditaion is so expensive so as not to be worth it.
It CAN be donel. You do realize that your phone's run off of the electriicty supplied by the phone line (I.e. unless your phone has an answering machine it does not need to be plugged in.)
There are 3 Barriers to doing it, and if we conquer ANY one of those barriers we can do it:
[li]Use far more sensitive reading and writing mechanisms (or a dramitcally different method).
[li]Use good RF shielding on the power lines
[li]Change the power grid specs dramatically.
While changing the shield or the power grid specs dramatically would require a massive revision of our powergrid, the first option is VERY likely to occure with the next 10 years, if it has not already happened, and will not be expensive or require masive upgrades.
Wires to house carrying electricity can definitely carry communication. Just because the FCC debunked one lunatic's theory as being garbage does not mean that the product can not be made.
Their is nothing in the concept that fundamentally contradicts laws of nature, so it can be done, we just have to figure out how to do it efficently.
You guys should work on your arguements, yours are seriously flawed.
1) Effiecency/Effectiveness as killing machines. How are you measureing it? Deaths per bullet? Nope, machine guns lose to almost any bullet weapon. Death per combat-man hour? Nope, Machine guns lose to bombs, traps, even shotguns. Deaths per energy expanded? Nope, snipers win. Death per cost? Disease does that far better (and yes, disease WAS used as a weapon of war - indians and small pox is just one example.) Deaths per time spent training user? Hand grenades beat them.
Also, machine guns are more likely to wound than to kill (especailly with modern combat surgery). But even if you considered a wounded man "dead", all the statements above STILL apply.
Machine guns are VERY VERY effective at what they do best. But they are not the best offensive weapon. Instead, they deny the enemey the ability to move through a small-medium ranged area. If someone is stupid enough to try it 1/2 heartdly, they fail. If they do it with determination, they take HEAVY losses even if they take the land.
As area denial weapons, they pretty much rule. Nothing beats them (with the possible exception of a machine-shotgun against unarmored people). That is why they are the staple at prisoner of war camps and prisons.
2) I never meant prisoners were not taken ever, I meant rarely. And before the Machine gun, the chance of the prisoner being killed was HIGH. The Machine Gun made it FAR more possible to keep massive amounts of prisoners.
3) However, the machine gun does not help you take prisoners, it helps you GUARD them. 90% of the time you can assign 1/3 your army to bring prisoners a short distance to a prison. The problem is once they get their, are you going to LEAVE 1/3 your army guarding the prison - or are you going to put machine gun at the walls and leave a token force to guard them?
Machine Guns made prison of war camps (and prisons) possible, thus negating the strong pressure to kill the captured.
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I have to agree with him about what he said. He never said it was legal to download stuff, he said it was not prima-facia illegal to download something that is copyrighted.
By "fair" we meant good value for what you pay.
Any company can make a profit without giving good value for what you pay. (For example sell chocalate at $500 per ounce as a new "wonder vitamin" - until people catch on you will make a ton of cash.) But eventually people DO realize what they are doing, stop paying them and they go out of business. For that reason, companies must be "fair" (as defined above) or rely entirely on new business and even then eventually close down as word gets around.
That is not a valid assumption, as anyone that has seen NYC driving.
"I gave my credit card number to this web site selling cooking books, and now the web site is closed and I got a virus that downloads porn and tries to send the porn to the IP address of the closed website"
1) They are "punishing" the people that make the most use of their service, rewarding those that make the least use. Considering they charge the same amount of money either way, it sounds like a good idea to me.
2) They are catering to two entirely different clientel: Set A) that watch a ton of movies, Set B) That watch only a few movies. Set A pays the same as set B but gets more quantity at the cost of less quality.
Either way, it sounds like a GOOD, FAIR, business plan to me.
But you are assuming Farmers are MORONS.
What, you think they do not know everything you just said????
Basically, your entire arguement requires for Farmers to buy seed that will destroy their own ability to reseed and also destroy the ability of their neighbors to reseed.
So, according to your logic, only a TOTAL and complete MORON would buy their seed.
Farmers are not stupid. If you have given a fair and honest representation of what is going on, then no farmer will buy this seed, it will only be used for experimental stuff.
The only way for the seed to be purchased is if you are SERIOUSLY wrong about what is going on.
Your "Monsanto Monoply" idea requires that farmers be MORONS.
Farmers are not Morons and will not do all the stupid crap you just said they will.
The most stuspicious thing about their study was that they tested volunteers, not a random sampling.
I know if they put out a call to test 3d modeling, a WHOLE bunch of game addicted, technophile guys would run to sign up. If their female sample was motivated by other factors, they might not have hade as much XP with 3d modeling software. If the guys had a ton more experience with 3d modeling, that would certainly explain the difference, and the fact that the difference went away with larger, clearer screens.
Look, we have not had space travel for more than 50 years yet.
Give us another 100 years, and we WILL have cheap spacetravel.
If we do it right, we might be able to make it cheap in 50 more years.
The world has tried multiple legs a lot. Evolution tested it, and generally found it lacking. Yes, for smaller creatures it has some advantages, but frankly it is not worth it for larger creatures. For most things, if any other animal has it and we do not, then it is not a significant change (with the exception of sex and other culture effecting things).
In general, most people make the following major mistakes when thinking about what is signigicant:
Brawn. Humans rule the world by virture of our brain. Intelligence and culture is FAR more important than Brawn.
Strange looking. Strange appearance is not that significant. A human with an extra arm etc. is not a big deal, it is still human.
Significant differences would be:
Truly NEW 'powers' - Super power type stuff, surviving in a vacuum, able to live for more than 150 years, telepathy, etc.
Sexual changes. Our culture is heavily molded by our sex lives. If we started up something where women did not need men to reproduce, that would cause MAJOR social upheaval.
Intelligence modification.
Dominance/Submission control (making people more/less likely to argue with authority)
Why your logic is flawed:
If I plant terminator wheat where it will pollinate other people's wheat, that means my wheat will ALSO be pollinated by their wheat. So I would be STUPID to do that, as my own wheat will end up STERILE.
The only way this works like you are scared of is if the MAJORITY of people are already using the Terminator Wheat, then people would be stuck with using the it. If most people start out using regular Wheat, you have to be a moron to buy the terminator wheat.
However, let us say I have some experimental gene that I do not want to get out to the general wheat fields. I implant that gean in the Terminator wheat to grow a crop for testing. I do not need to worry about some of my pollen being wafted over to your field, as even if you get a tiny bit, it will be sterile, so one generation later it will be gone.
I have an overactive immune system that attacks my own kidneys. It could kill me in about 10 years. (I am in my 30's).
Kidney transplants from family/etc. might help, but the real problem is that my immune system attacks my OWN kidneys, so you see the problem. Immunosupressant drugs are dangerous, leave me open to disease, and are not 100% effective. I end up with a weak immune system that still damages my kidneys a little bit.
The best hope for saving my life is genetic research into cloning kidneys from my own body, and then implanting healthier, younger kidneys into me. This is barely within our technological grasp, if we make it a priority. Dolly made you wonder, but it gave me hope.
That said, I do not consider Genetic manipulation of Human beings to be changing the species.
First of all, evolution is VERY effective. Any changes we make will be relatively minor. Our only real advantage over Evolution is speed.
Instead of NEW species, we will be making new "races" as in black vs. white, etc. etc.
It will take hundreds of years of actual evolution (living on seperate planets) to differentiate us enough to declare the new races new species.s
But we will end with a more vaired set of intelligent human races.
However, the reverse is true about nuclear power. The more we learn about it, the scarier it becomes.
In my opinion, that is because Nuclear Power is worthy of fear, while Genetic is not.
The secret is to use Orion Drives (Drop nuclear bomb behind space ship, explode bomb, repeat. Slignshot around the star instead of wasting Delta-V to stop and turn around.)
Of course, that project is a bit longer term than most we do, would be INCREDIABLLY expensive and scare too many people (Ralph Nader : "You are using WHAT for fuel?")
The problem of astronauts being weakened by space travel would be far less important as the few survivors would be old by the time they returned.
If they found a habitable planet, then they could radio back, and by the time they returned to earth, Alpha Centauri would be colonized.
2) You are pretty stupid if you do not realize what Alpha Centauri gets us. The most expensive thing most people buy is REAL ESTATE. Alpha Centauri is actually just the first stop on the road to finding inhabitable planets. Most intelligent people understand that. There is probably not habitable real estate on Alpha, but there might be. OK, forget about Habitable real estate, as you are clearly of the "can't be done" crowd. That real estate is full of nice things like GOLD, DIAMONDS, and lots of other extremely valuable minerals. Yes, Alph Centauri is a long way to go, we can probably start at the Asteroid belts.
You also appear to think that science is generally funded. There is nothing prevented people from funding the kind of medical research you want to - if the space funding went away, that money would NOT be transfered to the things you want, it would instead cancel the national debt. There is no choice that you think there is. P.S. If the things you felt needed funding were actually worthy of funding, we could afford them ON TOP of the space funding.
Did you pay any attention to my anti-terrorist arugement? Scientist are not switchable. They have already been trained by the US, Russians and the Chinese, and the Europeans to be Rocket Scientists. Anyone that would be tempted to develop missile rocket technology for Terrorists/evil doers WOULD NOT trade that in for the low end engineering crap jobs that you want them to take. P.S. If you knew ANYTHING about environmental science you would know that the greenhouse effect is currently a GOOD thing. Officially we are in the middle of an Ice Age right now. Yes, an Ice Age. It might be the warmer section of an Ice Age, but it is an Ice Age. While Global Warming is a REAL danger for the future, (if it keeps up we will end up a hot house with flooding and excess CO2), but right now it keeps the Ice Age that we are STILL IN from turning manhattan into a Glacier. The crap you suggest is a recipee for disater.
We do have a SERIOUS budget problem right now. In the US, we even know the cause. Bush took over the White House, cut taxes, and got invovled in several wars. Before that happened, we had money out the yin-yan and people were arguing about what to do with it. Space agencey had NOTHING to do with it. In addition, we CAN educate out children and give them books, the States just choose NOT to do that - they base education money on real estate taxes for no reason what so ever.
Stupid people do deserve jobs, but you are NOT trying to give them jobs. You are trying to take JOBS from smart people to pay stupid people not to work.
We are not trying to build "Toys" Toys do not do things. You may think our machines do not do something YOU want done, but they are clearly working devices that accomplish very difficult tasks. Your mention of the word Toy and everything around it is what is called an INSULT, not an argument. Try again.
We are NOT re-altering the priorities. They already exist. YOU are the person that wants to change the prioritise. I do not have to romanticize space travel, our society did that LONG before I was borne. Space travel is ROMANTIC. Period. But that is NOT why I want us to go. "Because it's there" is an intelligent response to people that just don't get it. Space Travel will take us to WHOLE NEW PLANETS. Since your "practical", unromantic view needs an economic justification, think of all the high end metals, etc. etc. we can get from those planets.
Yes it may be "for" a specific car, but truthfully, it is a concept ad that is helping the Brand "Honda" not that particular car.
That works out to about $1 per car, and if it creates just 300 more sales then it is profitable.
The ad made a LOT of finacial sense to the company.
And if they had mainly asked lawyers about the DMCA, they would have got a much weaker law - most lawyers realize it is a tad close to violating previos laws.
Make work only happens when you do not have ENOUGH work. Like I said before, Lawyers do not need to make work, there are so manypeople out there trying to sue for things like "McDonald's made me fat" that they do not need make work.
I do agree that we have too much lawyering going on. In my opinion that is because:
We let people sue for anything with pretty much no penalty. In my opinion, legal fee structures need to be regulated (No working on a case that no one has paid you any money for in hopes of cashing in on the settlement - a minimum of $1,000 or 1% of your clients last year tax payment, whichever is less, no charging more than 5% of the settlement).
Contracts involving an individual instead of just between two or more companies, should be legally limited to one page or less, excluding references to generic subclauses created by the legislature. Scrapping the custom creation of contracts would get rid of 95% of the crap that companies pull.
This law was created by the Media companies, for the media companies. Lawyers had little to do wit it.
Achieve Name Recognition.
Inform the Public of something new
Remind the Public that they exist.
Create an image/rep/brand.
Honda does not need any more Name Recognition. People know that Honda makes cars.
Honda has no need to tell anyone anything new. Frankly, they have nothing new to say.
Honda DOES need to remind us that they are still around. I haven't thought about them a lot.
And it CERTAINLY wants to create an image of being cool.
That is what this add is designed to do.
Basically, they are just showing off - but that will make some people think, Honda is a cool company, not like Oldsmobile, or staid like Cadilac.
This is a very effective commercial.
OK, Honda makes millions of cars, so that is less than 1 british pound per car. You just saved that much. OOPS. you just lost 50 sales. There goes your profit.
You have to be pretty inane to htink that a mere 500 days will drive people insane. Members of several sailing expeditions have travelled well over 1 year together without that kind of problem. Yes if they choose a black man and a member of the KKK they will have a problem, but we are not stupid enough to do that.
As to why we are going to mars, there are lots of GREAT reasons. Here area few:
Because it is there.
To further develop our manned space craft, so that eventually we will know enough to get a ship to Alpha Centauri.
To further develop our medical science so that we no longer have ANY problem with space travel.
To pay the smart people a ton of money to build something positive, instead of having them be unemployed and jobless when the terrorist asks them to use their rocket science to build something.
To give money to SMART people letting them leave lesser jobs. Where upon, slighlty less smart people will be hired to fill those jobs, (after they quit their old jobs - so even less capable people are hired to fill those old jobs etc. etc. etc) Trickle down does work when you are talking about JOBS, (as opposed to money.)
You see, when you spend money on a Science project, the money is spent on EARTH, even if the science is off Earth. This means you are WRONG, trips to mars DOES feed, clothe and house people and it DOES work it's way down to the guy on 32nd and Main under a box, if he is at least willing to try and work.
Mars is a good target because it is just barely within our reach. Once we get there, then we can try for the moons of Jupiter. After that Pluto. Then Alpha Centauri here we come!
So basically these are people that came up with cool ideas but were too lazy or too poor a writer to write a Sci-Fi story about them.
In short it is possible, but using the relatively insensitive machines that were proposed once before, without changing the specs of the power currently being transferd, the signal would have to be so strong that the electricity grid would radiate excessively, And the proposed means of shielding that raditaion is so expensive so as not to be worth it.
It CAN be donel. You do realize that your phone's run off of the electriicty supplied by the phone line (I.e. unless your phone has an answering machine it does not need to be plugged in.)
There are 3 Barriers to doing it, and if we conquer ANY one of those barriers we can do it: [li]Use far more sensitive reading and writing mechanisms (or a dramitcally different method). [li]Use good RF shielding on the power lines [li]Change the power grid specs dramatically.
While changing the shield or the power grid specs dramatically would require a massive revision of our powergrid, the first option is VERY likely to occure with the next 10 years, if it has not already happened, and will not be expensive or require masive upgrades.
Their is nothing in the concept that fundamentally contradicts laws of nature, so it can be done, we just have to figure out how to do it efficently.
1) Effiecency/Effectiveness as killing machines. How are you measureing it? Deaths per bullet? Nope, machine guns lose to almost any bullet weapon. Death per combat-man hour? Nope, Machine guns lose to bombs, traps, even shotguns. Deaths per energy expanded? Nope, snipers win. Death per cost? Disease does that far better (and yes, disease WAS used as a weapon of war - indians and small pox is just one example.) Deaths per time spent training user? Hand grenades beat them. Also, machine guns are more likely to wound than to kill (especailly with modern combat surgery). But even if you considered a wounded man "dead", all the statements above STILL apply.
Machine guns are VERY VERY effective at what they do best. But they are not the best offensive weapon. Instead, they deny the enemey the ability to move through a small-medium ranged area. If someone is stupid enough to try it 1/2 heartdly, they fail. If they do it with determination, they take HEAVY losses even if they take the land.
As area denial weapons, they pretty much rule. Nothing beats them (with the possible exception of a machine-shotgun against unarmored people). That is why they are the staple at prisoner of war camps and prisons.
2) I never meant prisoners were not taken ever, I meant rarely. And before the Machine gun, the chance of the prisoner being killed was HIGH. The Machine Gun made it FAR more possible to keep massive amounts of prisoners.
3) However, the machine gun does not help you take prisoners, it helps you GUARD them. 90% of the time you can assign 1/3 your army to bring prisoners a short distance to a prison. The problem is once they get their, are you going to LEAVE 1/3 your army guarding the prison - or are you going to put machine gun at the walls and leave a token force to guard them?
Machine Guns made prison of war camps (and prisons) possible, thus negating the strong pressure to kill the captured.