This isn't final unless/until all the remaining appellate districts rule in the same way. One district going the other way might bring it back to the supremes.
If they'd heard it and decided against the RIAA, rather than just refusing to hear it, it would be final.
Just as long as I don't hear the word Humanzee brought up, I think I'll keep reading. Whoever would volunteer for that experiment is both a hero to genetic science and a complete and utter freak, and guess which of those two will be remembered most fifty years from now?
Don't leave out artificial insemination when considering lab creation of a chip/human hybrid. (And there are more than enough people who would do such things to creat an occasional hybrid "in the wild".) The main problem with a human/chimp "natural coupling" (other than cross-fertility) would be the hazard to the human partner, due to the extreme strength of the chimp. (This would make completion unlikely without an extremely cooperative or bound chimp, despite a possible plethora of perverts who might be willing to try.)
A gorilla/chimp or human/chimp hybrid that tended to mule out would explain the rarity of sightings. And a human/chimp hybrid might well become much larger and stronger than either parent, due to the hybrid vigor phenomenon.
His conclusion that the warming of the planet will greatly accelerate the release of carbon from the soil, which in turn, will warm the planet, which in turn will release more carbon from the soil. As you can see, he predicts a nasty spiral.
One way to drastically drop the carbon level is to seed the southern Pacific ocean with small amounts of iron. This has been shown to cause an algae bloom, drastically increasing the sinking of CO2 from the air. (A major fraction of the algae die without being eaten and sink, taking the carbon with them to the deep ocean where it sits for millenia until the sluggish currents bring it to an upwelling.)
If we have a runaway we can try using this to turn it around. Attempting to fine-tune the carbon content of the atmosphere with it now risks the opposite spiral and a new ice age:
- Carbon sink lowers the C02 level and greenhouse effect.
- CO2 drop produces global cooling.
- Cooling results in more glaciation on Antarctica and the polar extremes of the other continents.
- Sequestered water and cooler temperatures reduce rainfall.
- Reduced rainfall expands deserts.
- Expanded deserts result in more dust in the atmosphere, including iron and other micronutrients.
- Some of this dust falls in the ocean, reenforcing and expanding the algae blooms.
There is currently some question as to whether this, rather than (just) solar cycles or continental drift modifying weather cycles, is the cause of ice ages.
its not that pat wants one DE its that gnome is taking too much effort for so little when dropline is good enough.
Specifically: KDE just builds, while Gnome takes pat a week of hair-pulling to fix up. Which sounds to me like a wakeup call for the Gnome developers to get their act together with respect to debugging the build before releasing versions.
Assuming it's not already too late and we're beyond the cusp-catastrophy bifurcation point and over the cusp onto the KDE side.
This is the same tech in all modern batteries. Increase surface area and you get more reaction. No different to heatsinks, it's been known for years.
But surface-area boosts in traditional batteries have been mainly a matter of putting micropores in plates, not changing from a plate geometry to posts.
It might be worthwhile to try the post approach in a "conventional" battery at macroscopic sizes. It might produce a significant improvement (though not as extreme as when the posts are nanoscopic).
You can't even get your own "democracy" right and you insist on spreading "democracy" by cluster-bombing civillians.
That's strange. Last time I looked, the US was using precision laser-guided munitions wherever possible. The improvement in war technology is minimizing "collateral damage" among the UNinvolved civilian population.
But you do have a point. You might say Sadam was a civilian - the "civilian" head of a government. The terrorist organizations are composed mainly of "civilians" - people with no rank in the military forces of a recognized government.
As for "getting democracy right", don't forget that, when we tried a republic, virtually all of the rest of the world (with such notable exceptions as the Swiss and certain American Indian tribes) was being run by dictators, mostly hereditary, and the republic of Rome and democracy of Greece were used as examples of why it couldn't work and dictators were necessary.
We modeled ours largely on the Iriquois Confederacy. We haven't had an internal major genocide or civil war in well over a century. The rest of the world was inspired by the US but keeps trying other variants - and still seem to have major tribal warfare and genocides every couple decades or so. A substantial fraction of US war casualties come from bailing them out.
The US' experiment with representative government has been going on a LOT longer than those in most of the rest of the world, including Europe (which I presume you are from, since it's Europeans who bleat the most about the US not getting democracy right). When Europeans have a better track record on issues we consider important (such as wars (when to avoid, how to prosecute) and "ethnic clensing") their opinions on what constitutes "Real Democracy (TM)" may receive a more sympathetic hearing.
Meanwhile we've let a lot of oppressed masses in on our side of the pond, and some of them haven't yet figured out what it means to be free and equal - to the point that there's a major culture conflict going on over here. You're seeing one aspect of it in this presidential race. We DO tweak our Constitution from time to time - and are always replacing the judges who interpret it. The ideology that pushed for freedom may yet lose out, and the US may become another European model "gotten-it-right democracy". If so, heaven help the human race.
your president is a bumbling idiot
As compared, say, to his major opponent? The well-spoken con man who sometimes can't hold a consistent poltical position from one end of a sentence to the other? (Especially if both sides are popular in different contexts.) Who has no CLUE how to keep war at a distance? Who "has a plan" but "it's on my web site". Have you READ that "plan"? Is THAT what you want the US to become?
(Maybe it is. You aren't a US citizen, are you?)
at least 50% of your population are stupid, ill-informed idiots.
About half of ANY population is "below average". B-) As to ill-informed, given the state of the US broadcast media and US public and "higher" education (run by members of the the party opposed to the "bumbling idiot") it's hardly their fault, is it?
Fortunately we have always had a free press (even if we don't have a free broadcast medium). And now we have The Web, which isn't yet TOTALLY buried in polically-correct one-sided mouthings. SOME of the population has been able to get hold of enough information and exchange analysis of it to bcome informed and think clearly.
the majority of u.s. citizend actually think they're fighting al qaeda in iraq right now.
Gosh, AC. If they're not Al Qaeda, just who ARE those non-Iraquis that are blowing stuff up in Iraq?
But the last time I looked they thought the US was also fighting some remanents of Sadam's regime and a lot of non-Iraqui insurgents affiliated with other organizations tha Al Qaeda plus a mix of unaffiliated fanatics.
If they want to be involved... then they should get the mandatory 15% of the polled vote just like the rules say.
If they DID get 15% the commission would raise it to 20. And then to 25. They'll have to be ahead of one of the dominant-party candidates before that hack stops working and
It's not the Commission's fault that they're running lousy, disorganized campaigns.
But it IS the fault of the Commission, along with the establishment media outlets, that they have so little name recognition. The big two get BILLIONS of bucks worth of free media exposure, while the little guys get nearly zilch. Vicious circle.
Nothing they can do in most cases. But in THIS case there's public funds and public institutions involved. That makes the legal situation a lot different.
There's entirely too much positive feedback in the US political system as it is. Allowing public funds to be used to shore up the incumbents against challengers in this way is another step from representative government to unchangable totalitarianism.
The Commission on Presidential Debates isn't a governmental entity--it's a private corporation. Why doesn't Badnarik, as a "libertarian", respect their property rights?
for one thing, although it is done by a private corporation, it is funded by the government.
And a tax-exempt "non-partisan" one at that - yet they're performing a partisan politicical action by denying media access to particular political views.
= = = =
But IMHO the big issue is that they're acting as gatekeeper to political speech on the airwaves - which (according to current legal theory) are "Public" and "Held in trust" for their owners - the general population - which includes Libertarians and Greens.
Meanwhile, the media operates them under license from the government (a privilege which may be denied, not a right which can be defended) and the government engages in content control and limits even licensure to a small number of players. No new TV or radio broadcasters need apply - and one of the rules is that even if you DO buy up stations to create a new private network with a different political slant, you are prevented from buying enough to reach even a majority of the population.
If (as the Libertarians want) the airwaves were parceled an sold off (or homesteaded) to become private property, the situation would be different. THEN a broadcaster who OWNED a particular chunk of them would not be subject to losing a "license" if his CONTENT was politically incorrect. And a new player could buy or start small stations (of which there are plenty even now available cheaply) getting out any message he wished or renting time to anyone he wished. At THAT point "private property" arguments would apply.
Alternatively, broadcasting could be treated like speech and the airwaves as a commons (just as the real air and the real sonic "air waves" are now). Something like WiFi is treated - don't shout down anybody else and you can say what you want, with commonly-accepted protocols for who gets to talk next that exclude nobody and give all fair access. Then the commons / public space arguments would apply (and again Libertarians could take coercive actions - starting with an appeal to legal process - if someone systematically shouted them down in violation of accepted norms).
As long as broadcast radio and TV are using a resource under government-whim-modulated rules the fact that the broadcasters and their cartel management are private corporations gives them no "private property rights" to use to impress a Libertarian. Instead they're in the possition of a government crony receiving a handout in return for misusing it in support of the government's own insiders.
I see no hypocracy here at all. Any appearance of it simply shows how badly the Libertarians' private property arguments have been miscostrued in the public eye.
Which, of course, is a result of their lack of media access. B-)
This is an American law affecting American companies, american citizens, and american institutions. Set up shop outside the border and you're immune, sadly.
'Fraid not.
Installing spyware on a computer in the US (even if you do it from outside the US) is an act that has a nexus in the US (the instalation of the spyware). It's the same case as a civillian in Mexico or Canada firing across the border and killing someone in the US. So the US has NO problem in declaring that a crime has been committed in the US and going after someone outside.
If the jurisdiction the bad guy is in also has such a law and an extradition treaty with the US he may just be shipped over here.
Alternatively, he can be captured and brought back extrajudicially (i.e. by a bounty hunter) or grabbed while in US territorial waters, international waters, on a US-flagged ship, on a plane that touches down in a US airport, or a number of other ways. While the snatch might not be legal where he was, that will cut no ice with the courts once he's here.
Or he can be tried in absentia and any assets the US can reached siezed.
Gives them a stronger argument for the DMCA.
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This sort of economic model spells the death of the Top 20 mindset that a lot of the traditional media conglomerates care about.
NOT PIRACY. Piracy just accelerates the change,..
More importantly, this gives them more ammunition for pushing to extend copyrights and claim that there is residual value in their old material that must be protected, and which can be tapped as soon as those nasty pirates are slapped down.
Think about it: The Wired article is talking about the old stuff and non-top-10% stuff pulling in MORE MONEY than all the current in-store product combined.
Granted that requires digital distribution and a sane pricing model. But now we've got an article from a respected source giving them the opportunity to put a pricetag on the potential market - a pricetag larger than their current multi-billion-dollar gross.
The print is just to force the demographic.
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I thought Wired was just a write-off vehicle for some company that had millions of gallons of fluorescent and metallic ink on their hands. You mean there's words in that magazine?
I always thought that the printing style was intended to force the demographic toward "young tech-savvy yuppies" by excluding anyone old enough to have presbyopia (along with anyone with other visual problems, such as color perception abnormalities.)
Total coverage, from 6 different networks' news shows? Under a minute.
(Except on FOX, of course, which covered pretty much the whole thing.)
First a history of biased news coverage, including outright falsehoods. (Examples: Faked exploding pickup trucks. Too much on gun issues to list.) Then pronouncements that "the viewers want entertainment, not real news". Then Rathergate (rubbing our noses in both the bias and the low quality of fact-checking), along with expressions of support from the other establishment networks' head news talking heads. Now virtual silence on something this important.
Yet the establishment news media wonders why people are turning them off and getting their news from other sources.
I guess that's what they get for listening to their own propaganda. B-)
The risk of traveling by plane is lower than by car even if you compute it per mile travelled. It's not lower because you fly by plane less often. You are a lot less likely to die on a 400-mile plane trip than you are to die on a 400-mile car trip.
I've seen that claim often. And suspect it's true. (I was in a plane, for instance, that blew ALL the tires on one side when it touched down - due to improper maintainence. I'm afraid I wrecked the captain's day when I congratulated him on the landing - he'd just bet another crwe member that nobody noticed anything.)
But I'd trust it a LOT more if any auto fatalities of auto passengers in the horrendous traffic near airports (where you WOULDN'T have been driving if you didn't have to go there to transfer to/from the plane) were counted toward the air travel, rather than car travel, totals.
NASA didn't do its job on making space travel available to the rest of us, while both it and other agencies of the government actively interfered with private space ventures.
(Fortunately that has changed - especially under the current administration - since the loss of most of the shuttles. Unfortunately that's too late for the PREVIOUS generation of private space ventures.)
Yes, some developments from NASA went into the tech of this vehicle. But IMHO it's more in the way of pulling teeth than having the tech paid for by OUR dollars delivered on a neatly-wrapped package.
Does this sort of über-large wind power machine generate more energy than it takes to create, install, and maintain it? I remember reading that the smaller machines required more energy over their lifetimes than they were able to generate.
No.
If it did, it would never make back its construction cost.
By the way: Similar claims about solar panels and small "personal" windmills, even if they WERE true, neglect several factors. Among them:
- Solar panels are generally used to provide power in remote areas, in lieu of running a power line. So (even if energy use rather than cost were the correct measure) you have to factor in the transmission losses and the energy used to tear out obstacles and install a power line, and build ITS pieces (insulators, transformers, poles, cables).
- "Energy" estimates neglect the efficiency of generation. Many of the production processes use fuel directly for heat, rather than running it through a heat engine and losing 3/4 or so to the carnot cycle limit.
If that's becoming less true, I think this is a great thing. I worry a little about the environmental effects of "taking energy out of the wind", but I haven't read about anyone important who shares my worry, so it's probably unfounded.
Even if that were an issue, if you believe "global warming" exists you should be aware that one of the predicted effects is violent weather due to the added wind energy in the atmosphere. Increasing the friction of the surface might just be a useful mitigation.
Not that wind farm could even approach the air friction of a pine forest of a similar area...
Birds shouldn't be hitting this since they can see it from miles away. Plus the fact that it's moving should scare them away. It's not like glass where they often can't see it and try to fly through it.
Unfortunately, birds tend to save weight on brain. B-( They don't seem to connect the passage of one blade with the next. When blades are big, and moving an an appreciable fraction of the speed of sound at right angles to the bird's flight path, they sometimes don't notice that there's another one coming until it's too late to dodge it.
Google for "windmills birds dead". Lots of info out there.
One estimate is 70,000/year in the US alone. Another is 44,000 for just Altamont pass. Another (in 1992, when there were fewer mills) put the Altamont Pass golden eagle kill rate at 39/year, and the total breeding population at 500 pair. More recent numbers put the kill rate for goldens at 60/year.
Golden Eagles, Red-tail Hawks, and Kestrels are at particular risk. They focus on their prey on the ground and ignore the blades. And there's a positive feedback loop: The shelter from raptors leads to a denser population of rodents near the mill, which baits in more raptors.
But other birds are not immune: Large wind farms tend to be set up in mountain passes, where the mountains concentrate the winds. But they also concentrate bird migrations, one of the factors focusing bird migrations into a few narrow "flyways". Birds tend to fly in flocks (to save energy by riding the vortices from the bird in front) and depend on their numbers to protect them from peredation. So even if the blades are noticed they may be ignored, and a flock may fly right through a windmill's swept disk.
The problem is mainly the large mills, whose blades turn at a slow rate (though still at a phenomenal speed) and which are too large to be perceived as a single unit. (I've never heard of any issues with birds related to the small, fast-spinning mills used for wind power on a home or farm level.)
- A really low per-minute rate.
- A really low per-minute rate with a minimum charge for a (rather small) number of minutes (to cover connect costs).
- A small be-connected charge plus a really low per-minute rate.
- Any of the above with a per-minute rate that starts really low and then drops still further with large volume usage.
These plans with a big prepaid lump followed by a larger per-minute rate for overages, or a big prepaid flat-rate lump, are nuts. They don't track the company's actual costs and create a perverse incentive structure for the user. This may be perceived as bottom-line enhancing by PHBs, but it actually makes for nasty financial weather.
IMHO the first company that switches to a model like one of the above will eat the lunch of any others that don't follow suit.
If none of them switch (and the flat rate doesn't get so miniscule that it's no longer a pain and voice doesn't get included in flat-rate internet service) the world will eventually switch to peer-to-peer VoIP (with a toll-call model to contact anybody stuck on the PSTN) and it will be all over.
It might matter whether Sakic wrote Connolly's code as an employee (I can't remember the legal phrase - "work under contract"?) or as a separate entity who then distributed the code to Connolly.
"Theft"... Is not applicable to information. Please use accurate wording.
I nearly agree with you. Unauthorized copying is not theft.
Taking the original, medium and all, is theft of the original.
Taking the information (whether an original and a copy) AND destroying all the copies in the possession of the original owner, is theft of the information.
The distinction between theft and unauthorized copying is that theft deprives the original owner as well as enriching the thief.
What do you have against rural workers of white or mixed white/indian/miscelaneous descent that you insist on characterizing them as rednecks?
You misunderstand.
"Redneck" is the canonical name for such people - used by them, not just by those deriding them. It refers both to the tendency of a short-haired person working outdoors to get a sunburned neck and to the significant fraction of them with American Indian heritage.
It is NOT a perjorative. It is the name of an identifiable ethnic group. Like "southern blacks", "hispanics", "easterners", or "dead white males".
Using it in a perjorative fashion IS an ethnic slur.
Just imagine if AKAImBatman had said:
It still emits plenty of radiation once it's chemically stable, so the only thing you have to worry about are Jews who think it's funny to melt down the batteries and mix them with paint for glow-in-the-dark wallpaper. Even then, I rather doubt it will have much effect on them.
And how is this is different from the current situation?
- Photographs could be planted (even worse)
And how is this is different from the current situation?
- Photographs from one reporter could be stolen by a rival reporter
And how is this is different from the current situation?
That last, by the way, is called "copyright infringement". It's why networks can distribute their internal signals in the clear without too much worry about the competition getting them. Meanwhile, even mile encryption schemes can keep the pics in the owner's hands until he's ready to post 'em.
Not to mention that the courts have held that you have no expectation of privacy in public. (That's why the papparazzi can chase down princesses in heavy traffic...)
The government already has cameras all over the place. Why shouldn't the people have 'em, too?
Meanwhile there are already laws against taking photos of people in private - and plenty of other technology to do it without any help from expensive WiFi cameras.
Imagine a hundred thousand people armed with such cameras, feeding images to...
Actually, a hundred thousand would be fine. No-one's going to be shifting that much data wirelessly from the limited geographical area of a street riot in a hurry. The cops will have done their work and gone home by the time the collisions have cleared from the network!
I had in mind a hundred thousand scattered all over the continent, not at one riot. Basic idea is if there's enough of 'em around, there's a significant probability that one or two will be on hand for just about anything.
(Something like the effect on crime when a small fraction of the population are carrying concealed weapons - and the crooks can't tell in advance which potential victims {or potential good samaritans} they are.)
Of course if the do-it-yourself camera men all converged in one spot, that alone would START a riot. And the camera strobes would bring a whole new meaning to "flash crowd". B-)
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This isn't final unless/until all the remaining appellate districts rule in the same way. One district going the other way might bring it back to the supremes.
If they'd heard it and decided against the RIAA, rather than just refusing to hear it, it would be final.
The current government is a
1) Republican administration
2) To which Microsoft was the third largest corporate donor.
This means that things like Department of Justice orders from *previous* administrations don't count.
I don't like the DoJ's soft-on-microsoft attitude either.
But would you prefer it if a Democratic administration couldn't decide to soft-pedal decisions made by, say, the appointees of Bush's administration?
You know they will. They always have.
Sauce for the goose IS sauce for the gander. So let's not get partisan over it.
Just as long as I don't hear the word Humanzee brought up, I think I'll keep reading. Whoever would volunteer for that experiment is both a hero to genetic science and a complete and utter freak, and guess which of those two will be remembered most fifty years from now?
Don't leave out artificial insemination when considering lab creation of a chip/human hybrid. (And there are more than enough people who would do such things to creat an occasional hybrid "in the wild".) The main problem with a human/chimp "natural coupling" (other than cross-fertility) would be the hazard to the human partner, due to the extreme strength of the chimp. (This would make completion unlikely without an extremely cooperative or bound chimp, despite a possible plethora of perverts who might be willing to try.)
A gorilla/chimp or human/chimp hybrid that tended to mule out would explain the rarity of sightings. And a human/chimp hybrid might well become much larger and stronger than either parent, due to the hybrid vigor phenomenon.
His conclusion that the warming of the planet will greatly accelerate the release of carbon from the soil, which in turn, will warm the planet, which in turn will release more carbon from the soil. As you can see, he predicts a nasty spiral.
One way to drastically drop the carbon level is to seed the southern Pacific ocean with small amounts of iron. This has been shown to cause an algae bloom, drastically increasing the sinking of CO2 from the air. (A major fraction of the algae die without being eaten and sink, taking the carbon with them to the deep ocean where it sits for millenia until the sluggish currents bring it to an upwelling.)
If we have a runaway we can try using this to turn it around. Attempting to fine-tune the carbon content of the atmosphere with it now risks the opposite spiral and a new ice age:
- Carbon sink lowers the C02 level and greenhouse effect.
- CO2 drop produces global cooling.
- Cooling results in more glaciation on Antarctica and the polar extremes of the other continents.
- Sequestered water and cooler temperatures reduce rainfall.
- Reduced rainfall expands deserts.
- Expanded deserts result in more dust in the atmosphere, including iron and other micronutrients.
- Some of this dust falls in the ocean, reenforcing and expanding the algae blooms.
There is currently some question as to whether this, rather than (just) solar cycles or continental drift modifying weather cycles, is the cause of ice ages.
its not that pat wants one DE its that gnome is taking too much effort for so little when dropline is good enough.
Specifically: KDE just builds, while Gnome takes pat a week of hair-pulling to fix up. Which sounds to me like a wakeup call for the Gnome developers to get their act together with respect to debugging the build before releasing versions.
Assuming it's not already too late and we're beyond the cusp-catastrophy bifurcation point and over the cusp onto the KDE side.
This is the same tech in all modern batteries. Increase surface area and you get more reaction. No different to heatsinks, it's been known for years.
But surface-area boosts in traditional batteries have been mainly a matter of putting micropores in plates, not changing from a plate geometry to posts.
It might be worthwhile to try the post approach in a "conventional" battery at macroscopic sizes. It might produce a significant improvement (though not as extreme as when the posts are nanoscopic).
You can't even get your own "democracy" right and you insist on spreading "democracy" by cluster-bombing civillians.
That's strange. Last time I looked, the US was using precision laser-guided munitions wherever possible. The improvement in war technology is minimizing "collateral damage" among the UNinvolved civilian population.
But you do have a point. You might say Sadam was a civilian - the "civilian" head of a government. The terrorist organizations are composed mainly of "civilians" - people with no rank in the military forces of a recognized government.
As for "getting democracy right", don't forget that, when we tried a republic, virtually all of the rest of the world (with such notable exceptions as the Swiss and certain American Indian tribes) was being run by dictators, mostly hereditary, and the republic of Rome and democracy of Greece were used as examples of why it couldn't work and dictators were necessary.
We modeled ours largely on the Iriquois Confederacy. We haven't had an internal major genocide or civil war in well over a century. The rest of the world was inspired by the US but keeps trying other variants - and still seem to have major tribal warfare and genocides every couple decades or so. A substantial fraction of US war casualties come from bailing them out.
The US' experiment with representative government has been going on a LOT longer than those in most of the rest of the world, including Europe (which I presume you are from, since it's Europeans who bleat the most about the US not getting democracy right). When Europeans have a better track record on issues we consider important (such as wars (when to avoid, how to prosecute) and "ethnic clensing") their opinions on what constitutes "Real Democracy (TM)" may receive a more sympathetic hearing.
Meanwhile we've let a lot of oppressed masses in on our side of the pond, and some of them haven't yet figured out what it means to be free and equal - to the point that there's a major culture conflict going on over here. You're seeing one aspect of it in this presidential race. We DO tweak our Constitution from time to time - and are always replacing the judges who interpret it. The ideology that pushed for freedom may yet lose out, and the US may become another European model "gotten-it-right democracy". If so, heaven help the human race.
your president is a bumbling idiot
As compared, say, to his major opponent? The well-spoken con man who sometimes can't hold a consistent poltical position from one end of a sentence to the other? (Especially if both sides are popular in different contexts.) Who has no CLUE how to keep war at a distance? Who "has a plan" but "it's on my web site". Have you READ that "plan"? Is THAT what you want the US to become?
(Maybe it is. You aren't a US citizen, are you?)
at least 50% of your population are stupid, ill-informed idiots.
About half of ANY population is "below average". B-) As to ill-informed, given the state of the US broadcast media and US public and "higher" education (run by members of the the party opposed to the "bumbling idiot") it's hardly their fault, is it?
Fortunately we have always had a free press (even if we don't have a free broadcast medium). And now we have The Web, which isn't yet TOTALLY buried in polically-correct one-sided mouthings. SOME of the population has been able to get hold of enough information and exchange analysis of it to bcome informed and think clearly.
the majority of u.s. citizend actually think they're fighting al qaeda in iraq right now.
Gosh, AC. If they're not Al Qaeda, just who ARE those non-Iraquis that are blowing stuff up in Iraq?
But the last time I looked they thought the US was also fighting some remanents of Sadam's regime and a lot of non-Iraqui insurgents affiliated with other organizations tha Al Qaeda plus a mix of unaffiliated fanatics.
Terrorists flew aircraft into buildings
If they want to be involved... then they should get the mandatory 15% of the polled vote just like the rules say.
If they DID get 15% the commission would raise it to 20. And then to 25. They'll have to be ahead of one of the dominant-party candidates before that hack stops working and
It's not the Commission's fault that they're running lousy, disorganized campaigns.
But it IS the fault of the Commission, along with the establishment media outlets, that they have so little name recognition. The big two get BILLIONS of bucks worth of free media exposure, while the little guys get nearly zilch. Vicious circle.
Nothing they can do in most cases. But in THIS case there's public funds and public institutions involved. That makes the legal situation a lot different.
There's entirely too much positive feedback in the US political system as it is. Allowing public funds to be used to shore up the incumbents against challengers in this way is another step from representative government to unchangable totalitarianism.
The Commission on Presidential Debates isn't a governmental entity--it's a private corporation. Why doesn't Badnarik, as a "libertarian", respect their property rights?
for one thing, although it is done by a private corporation, it is funded by the government.
And a tax-exempt "non-partisan" one at that - yet they're performing a partisan politicical action by denying media access to particular political views.
= = = =
But IMHO the big issue is that they're acting as gatekeeper to political speech on the airwaves - which (according to current legal theory) are "Public" and "Held in trust" for their owners - the general population - which includes Libertarians and Greens.
Meanwhile, the media operates them under license from the government (a privilege which may be denied, not a right which can be defended) and the government engages in content control and limits even licensure to a small number of players. No new TV or radio broadcasters need apply - and one of the rules is that even if you DO buy up stations to create a new private network with a different political slant, you are prevented from buying enough to reach even a majority of the population.
If (as the Libertarians want) the airwaves were parceled an sold off (or homesteaded) to become private property, the situation would be different. THEN a broadcaster who OWNED a particular chunk of them would not be subject to losing a "license" if his CONTENT was politically incorrect. And a new player could buy or start small stations (of which there are plenty even now available cheaply) getting out any message he wished or renting time to anyone he wished. At THAT point "private property" arguments would apply.
Alternatively, broadcasting could be treated like speech and the airwaves as a commons (just as the real air and the real sonic "air waves" are now). Something like WiFi is treated - don't shout down anybody else and you can say what you want, with commonly-accepted protocols for who gets to talk next that exclude nobody and give all fair access. Then the commons / public space arguments would apply (and again Libertarians could take coercive actions - starting with an appeal to legal process - if someone systematically shouted them down in violation of accepted norms).
As long as broadcast radio and TV are using a resource under government-whim-modulated rules the fact that the broadcasters and their cartel management are private corporations gives them no "private property rights" to use to impress a Libertarian. Instead they're in the possition of a government crony receiving a handout in return for misusing it in support of the government's own insiders.
I see no hypocracy here at all. Any appearance of it simply shows how badly the Libertarians' private property arguments have been miscostrued in the public eye.
Which, of course, is a result of their lack of media access. B-)
This is an American law affecting American companies, american citizens, and american institutions. Set up shop outside the border and you're immune, sadly.
'Fraid not.
Installing spyware on a computer in the US (even if you do it from outside the US) is an act that has a nexus in the US (the instalation of the spyware). It's the same case as a civillian in Mexico or Canada firing across the border and killing someone in the US. So the US has NO problem in declaring that a crime has been committed in the US and going after someone outside.
If the jurisdiction the bad guy is in also has such a law and an extradition treaty with the US he may just be shipped over here.
Alternatively, he can be captured and brought back extrajudicially (i.e. by a bounty hunter) or grabbed while in US territorial waters, international waters, on a US-flagged ship, on a plane that touches down in a US airport, or a number of other ways. While the snatch might not be legal where he was, that will cut no ice with the courts once he's here.
Or he can be tried in absentia and any assets the US can reached siezed.
This sort of economic model spells the death of the Top 20 mindset that a lot of the traditional media conglomerates care about.
NOT PIRACY. Piracy just accelerates the change,..
More importantly, this gives them more ammunition for pushing to extend copyrights and claim that there is residual value in their old material that must be protected, and which can be tapped as soon as those nasty pirates are slapped down.
Think about it: The Wired article is talking about the old stuff and non-top-10% stuff pulling in MORE MONEY than all the current in-store product combined.
Granted that requires digital distribution and a sane pricing model. But now we've got an article from a respected source giving them the opportunity to put a pricetag on the potential market - a pricetag larger than their current multi-billion-dollar gross.
I thought Wired was just a write-off vehicle for some company that had millions of gallons of fluorescent and metallic ink on their hands. You mean there's words in that magazine?
I always thought that the printing style was intended to force the demographic toward "young tech-savvy yuppies" by excluding anyone old enough to have presbyopia (along with anyone with other visual problems, such as color perception abnormalities.)
Total coverage, from 6 different networks' news shows? Under a minute.
(Except on FOX, of course, which covered pretty much the whole thing.)
First a history of biased news coverage, including outright falsehoods. (Examples: Faked exploding pickup trucks. Too much on gun issues to list.) Then pronouncements that "the viewers want entertainment, not real news". Then Rathergate (rubbing our noses in both the bias and the low quality of fact-checking), along with expressions of support from the other establishment networks' head news talking heads. Now virtual silence on something this important.
Yet the establishment news media wonders why people are turning them off and getting their news from other sources.
I guess that's what they get for listening to their own propaganda. B-)
The risk of traveling by plane is lower than by car even if you compute it per mile travelled. It's not lower because you fly by plane less often. You are a lot less likely to die on a 400-mile plane trip than you are to die on a 400-mile car trip.
I've seen that claim often. And suspect it's true. (I was in a plane, for instance, that blew ALL the tires on one side when it touched down - due to improper maintainence. I'm afraid I wrecked the captain's day when I congratulated him on the landing - he'd just bet another crwe member that nobody noticed anything.)
But I'd trust it a LOT more if any auto fatalities of auto passengers in the horrendous traffic near airports (where you WOULDN'T have been driving if you didn't have to go there to transfer to/from the plane) were counted toward the air travel, rather than car travel, totals.
NASA didn't do its job on making space travel available to the rest of us, while both it and other agencies of the government actively interfered with private space ventures.
(Fortunately that has changed - especially under the current administration - since the loss of most of the shuttles. Unfortunately that's too late for the PREVIOUS generation of private space ventures.)
Yes, some developments from NASA went into the tech of this vehicle. But IMHO it's more in the way of pulling teeth than having the tech paid for by OUR dollars delivered on a neatly-wrapped package.
Does this sort of über-large wind power machine generate more energy than it takes to create, install, and maintain it? I remember reading that the smaller machines required more energy over their lifetimes than they were able to generate.
No.
If it did, it would never make back its construction cost.
By the way: Similar claims about solar panels and small "personal" windmills, even if they WERE true, neglect several factors. Among them:
- Solar panels are generally used to provide power in remote areas, in lieu of running a power line. So (even if energy use rather than cost were the correct measure) you have to factor in the transmission losses and the energy used to tear out obstacles and install a power line, and build ITS pieces (insulators, transformers, poles, cables).
- "Energy" estimates neglect the efficiency of generation. Many of the production processes use fuel directly for heat, rather than running it through a heat engine and losing 3/4 or so to the carnot cycle limit.
If that's becoming less true, I think this is a great thing. I worry a little about the environmental effects of "taking energy out of the wind", but I haven't read about anyone important who shares my worry, so it's probably unfounded.
Even if that were an issue, if you believe "global warming" exists you should be aware that one of the predicted effects is violent weather due to the added wind energy in the atmosphere. Increasing the friction of the surface might just be a useful mitigation.
Not that wind farm could even approach the air friction of a pine forest of a similar area...
Birds shouldn't be hitting this since they can see it from miles away. Plus the fact that it's moving should scare them away. It's not like glass where they often can't see it and try to fly through it.
Unfortunately, birds tend to save weight on brain. B-( They don't seem to connect the passage of one blade with the next. When blades are big, and moving an an appreciable fraction of the speed of sound at right angles to the bird's flight path, they sometimes don't notice that there's another one coming until it's too late to dodge it.
Google for "windmills birds dead". Lots of info out there.
One estimate is 70,000/year in the US alone. Another is 44,000 for just Altamont pass. Another (in 1992, when there were fewer mills) put the Altamont Pass golden eagle kill rate at 39/year, and the total breeding population at 500 pair. More recent numbers put the kill rate for goldens at 60/year.
Golden Eagles, Red-tail Hawks, and Kestrels are at particular risk. They focus on their prey on the ground and ignore the blades. And there's a positive feedback loop: The shelter from raptors leads to a denser population of rodents near the mill, which baits in more raptors.
But other birds are not immune: Large wind farms tend to be set up in mountain passes, where the mountains concentrate the winds. But they also concentrate bird migrations, one of the factors focusing bird migrations into a few narrow "flyways". Birds tend to fly in flocks (to save energy by riding the vortices from the bird in front) and depend on their numbers to protect them from peredation. So even if the blades are noticed they may be ignored, and a flock may fly right through a windmill's swept disk.
The problem is mainly the large mills, whose blades turn at a slow rate (though still at a phenomenal speed) and which are too large to be perceived as a single unit. (I've never heard of any issues with birds related to the small, fast-spinning mills used for wind power on a home or farm level.)
I'd rather have one of these:
- A really low per-minute rate.
- A really low per-minute rate with a minimum charge for a (rather small) number of minutes (to cover connect costs).
- A small be-connected charge plus a really low per-minute rate.
- Any of the above with a per-minute rate that starts really low and then drops still further with large volume usage.
These plans with a big prepaid lump followed by a larger per-minute rate for overages, or a big prepaid flat-rate lump, are nuts. They don't track the company's actual costs and create a perverse incentive structure for the user. This may be perceived as bottom-line enhancing by PHBs, but it actually makes for nasty financial weather.
IMHO the first company that switches to a model like one of the above will eat the lunch of any others that don't follow suit.
If none of them switch (and the flat rate doesn't get so miniscule that it's no longer a pain and voice doesn't get included in flat-rate internet service) the world will eventually switch to peer-to-peer VoIP (with a toll-call model to contact anybody stuck on the PSTN) and it will be all over.
It might matter whether Sakic wrote Connolly's code as an employee (I can't remember the legal phrase - "work under contract"?) or as a separate entity who then distributed the code to Connolly.
The term is "Work for Hire".
"Theft" ... Is not applicable to information. Please use accurate wording.
I nearly agree with you. Unauthorized copying is not theft.
Taking the original, medium and all, is theft of the original.
Taking the information (whether an original and a copy) AND destroying all the copies in the possession of the original owner, is theft of the information.
The distinction between theft and unauthorized copying is that theft deprives the original owner as well as enriching the thief.
You misunderstand.
"Redneck" is the canonical name for such people - used by them, not just by those deriding them. It refers both to the tendency of a short-haired person working outdoors to get a sunburned neck and to the significant fraction of them with American Indian heritage.
It is NOT a perjorative. It is the name of an identifiable ethnic group. Like "southern blacks", "hispanics", "easterners", or "dead white males".
Using it in a perjorative fashion IS an ethnic slur.
Just imagine if AKAImBatman had said:
How would a Jew feel about that?
Rednecks feel much the same.
- Photographs could be wiped?
And how is this is different from the current situation?
- Photographs could be planted (even worse)
And how is this is different from the current situation?
- Photographs from one reporter could be stolen by a rival reporter
And how is this is different from the current situation?
That last, by the way, is called "copyright infringement". It's why networks can distribute their internal signals in the clear without too much worry about the competition getting them. Meanwhile, even mile encryption schemes can keep the pics in the owner's hands until he's ready to post 'em.
And then imagine some people doing the same, but using "creative" photograpy ...
And then imagine a blogosphere, full of the sort of people who caught CBS pushing forged documents, looking at the posted picture.
Like down to the bit level. And with whatever sophisticated tools they have at work, downloaded from NASA, or built by the open source community.
So what would that mean for privacy?
...)
privacy in public is oxymoronic...
Not to mention that the courts have held that you have no expectation of privacy in public. (That's why the papparazzi can chase down princesses in heavy traffic
The government already has cameras all over the place. Why shouldn't the people have 'em, too?
Meanwhile there are already laws against taking photos of people in private - and plenty of other technology to do it without any help from expensive WiFi cameras.
Imagine a hundred thousand people armed with such cameras, feeding images to ...
Actually, a hundred thousand would be fine. No-one's going to be shifting that much data wirelessly from the limited geographical area of a street riot in a hurry. The cops will have done their work and gone home by the time the collisions have cleared from the network!
I had in mind a hundred thousand scattered all over the continent, not at one riot. Basic idea is if there's enough of 'em around, there's a significant probability that one or two will be on hand for just about anything.
(Something like the effect on crime when a small fraction of the population are carrying concealed weapons - and the crooks can't tell in advance which potential victims {or potential good samaritans} they are.)
Of course if the do-it-yourself camera men all converged in one spot, that alone would START a riot. And the camera strobes would bring a whole new meaning to "flash crowd". B-)