A few years ago, my late father and myself conducted a 2 year study of every single school system in the State of Alabama and looked deeply into the issues of what made them tick and not tick. This resulted in a series of proposals based on what actually happens towards fixing the schools. Every single proposed solution at that time was passed except 1. That one was to actually vary the pay of the teachers and their tenure based upon the results of the standardized test progress of their students. Yes I did propose and it has gone nation wide the testing of schools by testing the progression of the students! I am the one everyone likes to hate over this.
The critics are absolutely right about the ineffective use of testing and such. My answer is shut up about the defects as an excuse not to test. Lets test the students and get better tests and better testing methods if you don't like the results. I whole heartedly support more efficient evaluation methods and any efforts that can direct teachers towards better results. The methods here are standard industrial and technological evaluation methods.
Schools are not under funded. They are grossly over funded. Teachers are not under paid except in their early career years. This may vary some from state to state but bureaucracy pays more by tenure. Lets cut this crap out that funding of the schools is the problem it isn't even the problem at all. The issue is that the system does not reward people for trying. It rewards them for expiring the clock. You get what you pay for.
The issue of Laptops in class has mostly to do with the issue of teachers being quite unwilling to adapt to the present time. Here are a set of solid proposals for the schools around the world.
Beginning about the 4th grade students should no longer carry books. They should be issued laptops. Their books should be documents on the net freely available to them. The school systems should hire the authors directly and fire the school text book companies. It would save a bloody fortune.
The issue of the style of interactive texts in the schools that is developed should be based upon an axiom my father said about teaching me the slide rule. (Yes I date to that time) He said, you may use a slide rule when the answer you get is more important than learning the method of getting the answer. This should be the objective of the design. All lessons should require the method be examined while that is what is being learned. If this is done, the tricking with cute fonts and cut and paste reports will do no good in grading.
The real matter here is design. I discussed this with the authors of www.starfall.com and their effort to teach phonics on line. (Excellent site by the way) I told them that the cute interactive graphics and funny cartoons should only work as a reward for full development of a lesson. They are doing more and more this way in time. This should set a map for people to see. One can clearly see that this is a job never done. It is a work in progress forever. That is why we will always need teachers and not just computers for training.
A note to the mods. This is the most on topic least troll and most informative listing you have ever read on this topic. If you can't see that write a criticism as a response or get a life. Otherwise this deserves every mod point you can give it. Slashdot shouldn't be a shout-down and heckle society.
With all respect intended I merely pointed out the condition. I also think that this respondent is like the people who think that medicine should work with its inventory "Just in Time". It all works until an epidemic happens then nothing is "Just in Time". We saw this a year ago where hundreds of thousands flushed out of New Orleans without their medicines and discovered that there were neither doctors nor drugs nor food nor water nor just about any essential reserve supplies. It all just about collapsed. We missed failure by inches.
Imagine if you will that we get those perfect highly efficient crops he thinks are so good. They grow on the soil extracting the nutrients so efficiently and then one day we find out that there is a disease to which they have no resistance. In a night every Cow or every Soybean or whatever in the whole world is dying. That is the formula we had when a cloned crop called potatoes grew in Ireland and in one winter they almost all rotted. Then the free traders who make the arguments discussed above hit. The twin plagues of "Free Trade" and a Fungus took down millions. The Irish Potato famine is what we know it as in history. English traders figured it was time to profit on the shortage that a total genetic volunerability in a crop produced. Mass murder was the result.
The same "Free Traders" held a party in India after WW-2. India became a synonym for starvation as a result. This sort of thinking that these natural laws are not to be followed is an insanity.
I will be much more plain here. The concept of efficiency as a God is not rational. It stands in stark defiance of the natural laws of the world. Natural systems are inefficient for reasons we often do not know. Genetic variation is there as a defense of the population. Inefficiency of soil use is part of the preservation of a feedback loop system to keep it running. Every people in history who has held to the fantasy that this is not so has lost out. The inefficiency that we see is actually part of a greater economy.
The problem in modern times is best illustrated by the fact that success in bringing in a big crop was cause for ancient peoples to all celebrate. They all knew it brought them good times. Today the man who brings in a bumper crop has to cry as the price crashes because of our false economic ideas that a chore is isolated from any other chore. These false isolation structures fool us into believing a banker makes a town rich while the farmer and factory types are just obsolete old worthless types. (You haven't stopped eating have you?)
I am no socialist. I do understand that there is a very real progress in events and life. I do understand that we must adapt. The issue is what must adapt to what. Will we build a world where the people must adapt to the engine or will we build an engine that adapts to the people? That is really the issue.
I recently took a short term contract position with the US Army Corps of Engineers in Huntsville, Alabama. I was working for a sub of SAIC. As I processed in the President of the USA decided to cut the positions of anyone coming in so BYE! Not fun! A week later the contractor observed that they had missed me signing a bunch of papers. So I came in to expost facto fill out the pre-employment agreements. I hit the NDA and such and started reading and wrote across the top NOT NO! HELL NO!. I explained to the people that I was working on some very important inventing when I took the job. Their agreement gave them rights to every invention on or off the job even if not related to the job that I worked on during the time I worked the job. I told the contractor that for less than 2 weeks work SAIC didn't buy rights to my project and frankly their company was not worth enough to buy out the patent so unless they rewrote the NDA and such they could forget it. This really sucked for them to ask such because I wasn't even working for SAIC except indirectly.
Read those contracts people! (SAIC's contracts STINK) Honestly I think that any employer who thinks he buys invention rights from people who earn less than 7 figures is probably taking advantage of people. Any employee who invents for such people is a smuck.
Actually Cloning already occurs in cows though it isn't "Old Cell" cloning. It is embryo splitting and has been done for 20 years or more.
In agriculture the holy grail is this genetically perfect item that does only what you want it to do 100% efficiently and every time. There are several serious problems with achieving this. The first is that the production of a genetically identical crop base becomes a 100% threat of pathogens exploiting a weakenss and wiping out 100% of the crop in one fell swat. This is already becoming a serious threat. Then you get into the economic issues.
If you can grow the famous bug free 100% efficient crop (It really doesn't matter what it is) and have it match the market 100% then you have the goal of the farmers. At this point the farmer earns exactly nothing because there is no skill involved, and there is no cost differential to his competitors and such. This has happened to a great extent in Cotton, Corn, Wheat and Soy. With the advent of the perfect Cotton, production rose 5 times per acre and the price dropped by 2/3rds. The result was almost collapse of any profits in farming cotton and all the profits went to the seed companies.
As the "perfect chicken" invaded the chicken houses similar situations happend to the profits in raising chickens. The industry has reached a point of nearly zero profits. If this happens in cattle then the industry will be reduced to having literally no profits for the farmers. They will have achieved the magical world where they don't have to work hard to make the perfect crop and well they will have created themselves out of a job.
Those who don't like this economic reality had best start figuring out a new way to live because this is logically the holy grail of all the economic development types. It really doesn't matter what you do, they are trying to produce this situation. It strikes me of a situation where you are cured of what you suffered from and suffering from the cure.
Don't take this as negative to the proposals, just as a report of conditions. Have fun with what you do with this reality. We are going to see a lot more of it.
I don't know about you but I learn stuff on Slashdot from time to time. I will admit the Trolls might think that they know everything but often they serve to tip me off to some pretty good stuff. Usually they get upset over good stuff.
Yes even work related stuff. For example: I worked in a facility that worked on Prediction Markets and it came up on Slashdot that some Senators were fussing about it. I knew stuff useful to the company in advance.
The issue of internet access at work and its use is a curious one. We have been allowing people to use the telephone at work for years in a limited fashion. As long as it didn't invade the work day too much it was sort of accepted. It also generally wasn't recorded.
Internet is just telephone communications. No different. Treating it differently isn't wise. The employers are right though if the use gets out of hand.
There is of course the problem of not knowing what browsing is legitimate anyway. This isn't easy to determine either. Remember that clicking on a link might be accidentally the wrong one or you might be searching a topic and get one of those trick sites listed for the Porn types. It isn't really a matter of any or filters, it is a matter of content and time.
I am going to try to explain this in very simple terms. This requires me to use very small words and simplified stuff so please don't expect the really hard core stuff here. Rest assured this stuff works!
There is a solution achieved from the Maxwell equations that says F=(B^2) * A/mu. Since for any position of a motor mu A/mu never changes relative to its state at the same position, the equation reduces to F=B^2. So far so good. Now to grade school math. You were always taught that 1 + 1 = 2. In magnets this isn't true. F = 1^2 = 1, F=(1+1)^2 = 2^2 = 4. In short 1+1=4. If one of the ones in the magnet example is a permanent magnet and one is an induced magnet, the sum is still 2^2 or 4. The price you paid to get the Force = 4 was 1! Of course in the real world nothing works 100% efficient so you probably will get a bit more like 3.5 instead of 4 but so what! YOU just put in 1 unit of energy and got out 3.5 unitis of energy. COP = 3.5! Not bad!
Now we move on to Steorn's device and rest assured it works. The math here is exactly the same but we are doing division. Steorn's device takes a field of 1 and a force of 1 and then splits it in half or more. At 1/2 split the B field to affect motion or to produce force now is 0.5 or 1/2. This means for a shield which takes up 1/2 of the B field, I can get the force for use split into two parts, one of which I pay for and the other I do not. The one I pay for is F=B^2 or F = (0.5)^2 = 0.25. Now I paid 1/4 of the energy of the unshielded permanent magnet and I reduced the torque force from it which works against me to 1/4th as well. This is for the detail people a canceling of Back EMF of a Dipole by shorting! Summing here we get 0.5 force against me when shielded and when unshielded we get 1 force for me working. (This is positional if you haven't figured out.) That's for a motor.
Now lets play with a transformer. This device can drive the magnetic field of a transformer for the energy cost of 1/4th of the magnet. At the same time it can produce flux by reversing the magnets that varies +/- 1 or a total of 2. This means we get generation of energy out of a standard coil winding equal to 2x the magnet and we paid 1/4th of the energy for the magnet. Of course this isn't going to come out at 8 times but so what if it comes out at 5 or 6. This all looks party pretty to anyone wanting energy.
So for parties out there who haul out their tired old axiums I have one final demonstration. If you suspend an object using an Electro-Magnet you can measure a direct relationship to the current needed to suspend it. Its all standard equations here. If however; you suspend the same object with a permanent magnet, it can be done indefinitely without current application from outside. The current is internal. There is no difference between an induced magnet and a permanent one. Actually they all are permanent magnets just the Induction alligns a disorganized set of magnets and a permanent magnet has them alligned already. So you can see a magnet can produce energy. In fact it does it all the time. Only now we have the mechanisms to capture this energy.
Just remember that the fact that we have not had this in the past means only that we were ignorant of the means back then. It doesn't mean it was impossible. Cleopatra could have had TV. All of the physical laws worked just as well back then as now. They just didn't know how back then.
Come on! We are all nerds here! Why hasn't anyone here gotten it? Its really simple. Biometric payment schemes are all just fancy passwords, the only problem here is that the password that is the weakest to break is one that never changes and which may be read by those in public. Your fingerprints never change and they can be read in public. Worse yet they also can be conterfitted easily by very simple technology. They also can be obeserved quietly and without intrusion as was noted by a few other posters on the issue of fingerprints being discarded everywhere.
Biometric identificiation systems may be useful as adjuncts to other systems but in the end, they are going to be as weak security as the social security number.
Does anyone sincerely think that consultants who make money from pleasing mangement are going to tell us anything but "blame the workers." I saw in this factory the fact that all they had to do was add a few active sound suppression devices and do some other minor changes to the machinery and then deafening conditions wouldn't need the plugs. By the way the factory used ear pulgs all the time. They damn well do not work well. Have any of the consultants realized that ear plugs raise ear infections over double? Everyone in this factory complied with ear plugs! Have any of the consultants ever looked at simple things like adding a baffle in the factory in a place or two? A little insulation on the roof might have worked too! How about designing a motor with a cover to keep down the noise?
Try thinking with other than your pocket book for a change. The reality is that for a few thousand dollars in changes this factory would have been safer (People need sound to communicate safely) and they could have ditched the infection causing equipment.
I saw the locations where accidents happened. The most modest acceptance of responsiblity and making a few modifications would have saved a lot. One conveyor which went into a tire shredding device could have for the addition of a photosensor device or a trip wire have saved at least 3 lives. Another location if an IR sensor array were located well, the machine would have avoided catching fire about every 2 weeks. The tire building machines could have for the addition of a photocell or two or a trip wire have saved hands and fingers.
These things would have saved lost time, injuries, speeded production and generally made things nice. But these guys will not need to worry about this now. They moved to Mexico where you can dump the people who get hurt in the ditch by the plant and shoot the family if they complain.
By the way the mid level management entirely agreed with me. They hated what was going on but they could not stop Management. I think people who don't work under these conditions generally have no idea what is going on.
I feel compelled to support the parent of this post and a few above it in their noting that it is ILLEGAL, IMMORAL and just plain TERRORISTIC of the US Government to be tapping calls without a warrant. For those who argue that there is a foreign danger, they simply do not understand what is going on. This program was never aimed at the foreign threat. It was aimed at domestic suppression. It wasn't targeted at any terrorism purpose unless you view citizens exercising their rights as terrorists towards a criminal government. I have read the RFP's on these programs. They were not limited tapping for terrorism. It was tapping everything everywhere all the time and forever.
There can only be one rational explanation of why these people wanted to avoid the special courts set up to handle proper warrants. They were against the law and for bad purpose since the special courts give very nearly carte blanche to the government requests. This is prima facia evidence of a government going far out of its way and starting to act as a Terrorist itself. In point of fact is is running a MAFIA PROTECTION RACKET. For those who don't understand, you set up a terror condition and sell protection. In this case the mobster has the luxury of not even having to hire the enforcer since Al Qaeda and others will provide the terror for the ordinary people and they just shake us down of trillions of dollars in taxes.
Please wake up people. Hurricane Katrina Relief on the US Gulf Coast (2005) has amounted to 220,000 homes needing recovery help. The current expenditures of the US Feds is $178 Billion. That breaks down for those who cannot use a calculator to $809,090 per home. The homes are not rebuilt folks and volunteers are still cleaning up. This govenment is stealing Billions of dollars every place it can from the American People. The current administration fears it will be found out and properly opposed. This is why they are doing their data acquistion programs. They are planning terror if we oppose them. Doubt me? Look at what they do every time there is an argument against them. Look and see if they have actually been effective anywhere at any time for stopping terror. They have not been. They refuse to clean up the US border situation and in point of fact are the prime instigators of the trouble. They accused community watch types (The Minuteman Project) of being terrorists.
Well we citizens are terrorists to these criminals. If we wake up and put them in jail their reign will be over. Do not make anything partizan out of this. This is pure citizenship.
I would like to discuss this in some detail. Congress Critters are you listening?
The issue here is simple and almost sinfully so. If you are to get a job working for the Government, it doesn't matter which agency, you have to provide your quailification credentials. We see them on looking for a job as a list of qualifications. This applies to contractors who supply the government as wee. This becomes a list that looks like a laundry list of the history of the agency. We programmer types will know these very well. The list goes like this:
Programmer with 15+ years Experience in Matlab.
Must have 15+ years in Military Logistics with US Army SMDC
and the list goes on. There are only two problems with this listing. Both of these cannot exist. The only person who can qualify with these "pseudo credentials" is somebody who has just retired from the army and frankly even then it is a fiction. The result is that old unqualifed failure that was just booted out of the ranks for incompetence is now the only person qualified for duty.
In the FBI this is worse not better. The results are that the FBI remains unable to respond because it cannot recruit new blood to infuse it. The situation in contracts is even worse since the bureaucrats in the Government reserve the right to pick and choose the people who will work with them on contract. The contractor doesn't get to pick his people! This makes absolutely sure that in the post 9/11/2001 world only those who failed us before 9/11/2001 can ever be "Qualified" to do any work. They are the "Experts" we hire to do our work. The resulting situation is from top to bottom the agency fails ever worse and costs ever more.
The solution is pretty simple. There needs to be a wholesale cutting from the top of the dead wood of the agencies. We need to fire about 99% of the people in management and start at the bottom rebuilding. The GS system is built the reverse of this. Bumping needs eliminated. GS people need to have manditory retirement at set ages and terms of service. The legislative support of contractors needs changed towards performance controls and away from managing personnel of contractors. Frankly the US agencies excepting where sensative data or methods are involved should have no influence over hiring of contractors. Even then it should only be security issues and not the qualifications at issue. Contractor companies should have to be performing based on results and paid accordingly.
Had the FBI contract had a penalty of $250,000 per day for failure to perform the results would be in hand and done now. This by the way is typical contracting rules in the civilian arena. I have worked on such civilian contract rules for years. It gets work done and on time.
As it sits it is typical for contracts to demand 10 years experience in.net. (Programmers will have to laugh their heads off on this one..Net isn't that old itself)
Having worked as RN in a large factory which had Lost Time Injuries approximately every 3 days.... and which could have saved a fortune if modest changes had been made, I have discussed this with management.
The motivation of the management who makes the decisions is one of control and temper. It really does make sense to make things safer. This factory could have saved about $100,000 a week had it improved safety. They just didn't want to do it. You see a worker was only paid about $50,000 a year and as such these people didn't cost management enough to be worth anything to them.
I watched the expensive management employees get protected while the workers got nothing. This was a tire factory. They made $1,350,000 a day even with this injury expense. It may be strange to some but actually the workers were too cheap to be worth anything. The loss of a life about every year or so was an acceptable cost to management. So what if you pay off the family with a damage claim of $500,000 or so. Blow it off. These people are worthless in the eyes of management...
Saving $5,200,000 a year simply didn't enter their mind as worth that much effort. I proposed that we use the medical data to extract which machines should be fixed. I offered to observe the machines and look at what was going on. They had no interest. One major loss to them was hearing losses. The addition of a few minor changes could have nearly silenced the factory. They couldn't care less. Another major loss was loss of hands and fingers and intermittently a person in a machine. Simple design changes in jobs would have improved production and saved lifes. They didn't care because it might "bother" their situation. It was an attitude that the "Free Trade" advocates refuse to recognize. Burried in the true motivations of many rich persons is a hatred of other social classes and a view that they are property not people. This is why they will not embrace safety technology.
I think it is interesting that the election cycle is going on and troubles are growing. Has anyone noticed the damage the stealing (taxes) of nearly 3 trillion US dollars from the US economy to maintain what are deliberately totally ineffective and counterproductive security measures has done to the US Economy? Has anyone noticed that the relationship between bureaucrats and the citizens is exactly the same as between the fox and the hens...? Has anyone checked the bills under consideration or markup in the US Senate, US House or the British Parlimentary houses? Has anyone noticed unusual regulations in the Federal Register or the British similar structures? (I am just wondering if anyone is awake out there. Mods don't get mad I am asking!)
I am not suggesting the Islamic nuts are no danger, but has anyone noticed that there is a clear PROFILE that police could use if we were not being politically correct? (Young Pakistani [racial] males who were trained in Pakistan -- Been to Pakistan lately anyone? They were!) Has anyone noticed that detection of very strong peroxide isn't hard? Proxidase works and a potato peel has it cheap.
Has anyone noticed that it isn't hard to ARM YOUR CITZENS or to TRAIN CITIZENS to defend against such types if anyone was interested? Has anyone noticed that if the police were to just pick up reported criminals it might work? It usually does for everything else these trouble makers do.
This whole situation has the look of Dumb and Dumber to me. Does anyone else see the same?
One of the unique realities of living in the area of Huntsville, Alabama (MSFC) is that you get contact with people who are actually doing things. If you make the right contacts, you know who and what is going on. Here is what is going on regards to NASA and the original data from the Apollo missions. More precisely what has gone on.
The US officials at NASA ordered the destruction of all of the records associated with the Apollo Missions after the last flight to the moon. The Chief of the Records realized how stupid this was and he conspired with certian persons to have some 8 tons of records moved to a secured location with persons in custody who would not tell where the records were or admit they existed. The reason I know of this is that I had extended contact with the man who set this up. The reason he told me was that the discussion of returning to the moon was coming up about 8 years ago and NASA sent a some men out to see him asking if the rumor was true that he had done this and where they could get the records. He told them it didn't exist but on my arrival he was spitting mad at the idiots at NASA over wanting the records. He feared that they might be destroyed if NASA got them again. He felt they were priceless historic documents and that they must be protected. I do not expect them to appear for 100 years or more due to this.
Contained in these records are films, data stores, and all of the technical documents for operation of the Apollo System. Why these were ordered destroyed he felt was a very malicious act. The real reason for the order was that the US Government at the time wanted to destroy the ability to return to the moon any time in the near future. They possessed about 5 rockets able to go and they wanted nobody able to operate them. The also did not want any more able to be fabricated. This discloses international agreements that involved the USSR and other parties that demanded the destruction of this data.
Believe this or not if you will but this is in fact what happened. This discloses the very dirty nature of the behavior of some "well respected" parties in the world. I cannot hope to have people on this forum believe me, but maybe some will. The reason I was present was I was working as RN at the time and I was making Home Health visits 2 times a day to the home. Frankly I was more trusted than the NASA people by this former high ranking NASA man. My experience with such men has included former German Rocket Scientists and many others. When you meet these people you learn what has really gone on.
This man who was the chief of the record keeping for the Apollow program told me how a year before the Sputnik launch the President of the United States had ordered the entire US Army Missile program lab at what is now Marshall dismantled and taken to the dump. When the Sputnik launch panicked the Americans, He and others had to go to the Base Dump and with their own money buy back the "Scrap" equipment in order to get the lab going again. Even the first test stand they built was built this way. It is now an historic monument!
The description of some details here is slightly modified so as to keep some nasty people off the trail and to protect the records. The title of the position the man held is descriptive but not the real title. I am not sure if this man is still alive and I don't want to cause him or his associates any trouble. There have been several attempts to secure these records to have them destroyed over the years since 1973.
A person only has a limited amount of clotting factors in their body at any one time. If you consume it in one area doing one job, it is not available to do the job elsewhere. This isn't a big inventory and does not replace fast. In any case clotting deliberately may have value but it has a cost.
The process may need contact now, but rest assured accoustic technology would allow with wave mixing this process to be applied without contact. The process of wave mixing and spread spectrum allows low frequency carriers to carry higher frequencies. Also shock waves with infinite harmonics do the exact same thing (AKA explosions) so the technology will get perfected.
Just to clarify the point a bit of the parent post: Imagine a neighborhood of nest eggs like the brokerage add that is common these days or the Freddy Mac add. Then imagine a big rich guy's nest egg sent to roll that neighborhood flat. Seeing a trail of destruction of entire towns or communities crushed as his nest egg moves around you get the point.
A shade of experience might come in handy. I was researching a lot of stuff involving magnets for issues of motors etc. I had no interest in Magnetic Therapy though I had heard of it for years. I generally regarded it to be a bit silly.
Then one day my 81 year old mother with 3 fractures in her left lower leg and diabetes who had been told she would never walk again called me because her leg was swollen about 2 times its normal size. I came over to help her as best I could. On a wild chance I placed 2 magnets on her leg. It was just to see what would happen. In about 60 seconds the swelling was gone! (That doesn't happen with the best of drugs folks!) After 1 week of exposure to the magnets, X-Rays showed a leg that had not healed at all in 3 months to have the region near where the magnet was, completely healed fracture and all. More astounding was seeing the X-Ray! It showed the calcification in her Osteoporosis (Ghost Bone)to be fully restored in that area about the size of a soft ball where the magnet was kept on her leg. After that we moved magnets to cover her other fracture locations. In 4 weeks they were healed. The neuropathy she has (Pain from nerve regrowth patterns and IDDM) is only successfully relieved by magnets. Drugs don't do it.
I went looking hard into the physics of how this works. Here is the process. There is a derivation of the Maxwell Equations that states Force = B field squared times the Area / the universal magnetic constant. Since Area and the constant drop out under normal conditions the Force = B Squared. The Mitochondria of the Cells (Energy Power house of the cells) are small DC motors and their efficiency goes up if their magnets are stronger. Adding an external field adds to the B field and thus squares the sum as the power of the mitochondria. But it was even more. Since 1799 it has been known that transmutation (fusion for you physics types) is done in living things. Chickens in Wales were found putting out more Calcium than they were eating. This has since been validated extensively including 2 Nobel Prizes and work done by the US Army and by the French nuclear agency. The mitochondria of the cells does this transmutation. This means that they are small particle accelerators with microscopic "Wiggler" magnet sets. Adding an external field strengthens them. As such the cells can do their work more effectively this way.
The pain relief therefore from magnets isn't like standard medical drug pain relief where we suppress a function. Rather a magnet relieves pain, and I now know it with my arthritic back, by causing damaged cells that are weak and which might cause pain by disintergration to be able to accelerate their function and recover. This in medicine is the magic pill that doesn't do wrong. It is real. I know about this healing ability personally from my mother as well as myself. I kicked a toe and injured it severely. One night with a magnet taped to it and it healed.
Why then all the discussion if it works? It is quite simple. We didn't have good strong magnets until recently the therapy was unreliable because it diminishes by the inverse square law in distance and the old magnets had no range. The new N-50 magnets have the range. The ones I was using have a 200 gauss field at over 4 inches away. Point blank they have 14,700 gauss and are massively powerful. Also most experiments have not been sized to the test subjects.
Now just some pure physics stuff for people out there: There is absolutely no difference between a permanent magnet and an induced one. All magnets are already resident in the media and induced ones are merely aimed in response to the external field. All magnets do represent strong electrical currents. The ones I am using for therapy would correspond to approximately 1 hp of current driving an induced magnet. The process by which a magnet works is that it is a diode in the ether. I know the Einstein types out there don't believe in the ether. They also don't know how a magnet works. They
Ah Ha! My chance to get modded into oblivion by those who don't know anything!
XML is a tagging system. It may be useful for the transmission of data between dissimilar systems but even there it is a crappy methodology. It bloats the data with massive tags, if you parse it in anything but a linear fashion, it becomes a recursive method to make processes take forever and isn't worth anything more than a flat file with a table at the top to tell you where things are. XML only handles ASCII and doesn't do that very well. In fact it really goofs up when you get down to numbers. Imagine 12 types of nodes! (Reality if you have run the parser) It isn't even logically linear in operation. XML eats internet bandwidth like it is going out of style.
As to the "Silver Bullet" theory. Well XML is a whole lot better than a secret proprietary methodology, but that could have been solved by simply telling the file format.
What is going on is something a lot of us older programmers have known for a long time. We see subsituted for skill, planning and ability for massive structures that eat memory, and they do the job, sometimes and slowly. I remember open discussions that memeory would eventually expand to the point that we didn't have to worry about it in programming. Of course that geometrically degraded the performance. Sure you have enough memory now but what are you using it for?
I am replying because this is fair to note that just because the NAZI's did something doesn't mean it was wrong. That logic is entirely correct. The metric that the intent to collect data on everyone because you can trust noone and you must control them with information is 100% intended to be obvious. Eisenhower left office warning of the "Military Industrial Complex" and its real dangers. I could quote many other statemen as well.
Other posts noted the evils of Stalin. The final end of this process will be, no matter how well intentioned, exactly what the NAZI's and Stalin did to even higher efficiency. This data will form into the hands of those who use it to manipulate and control. This will not be accidental either. I have read the RFP's. I looked at bidding on them and my morals would have nothing to do with the projects because they obviously were evil from the start.
The most basic statement I can make to those who defend such awful programs is this: On 911 my freedom and my prosperity were not the problem, they were then and remain to this day, the solution! There was not nor ever was any probable cause to suspect me or my countrymen in the USA of such awful stuff. There was then and is now an increasing probable cause to suspect the policing powers of deliberately failing to do their job and failing to answer to the just and proper complaints of the citizens. Every day our police powers become more and more invasive and every day our government further refuses to enforce long constituted laws. These to be blunt are cause for war by the citizens against the US Government. I am no advocate of war. However; I note that the very charges in the US Declaration of Independence as cause for independence and for war to defend it are operative here. Read it for your self if you doubt me.
As to be being non-partizan here. Even the Republican Leadership in the congress is seeing this and is starting to speak out on this. For the Bushies to think this is partizan is for them to be their own party and not Republicans. A Republican is by definition of the term, one who supports the Constitutional Federal Republic of the United States of America. To support this program places one squarely as an enemy of the Constitution a document that one should not forget that the President of the United States is sworn to Preserve, Protect and Defend. No person who supports the search of the person documents and effects of another person without probable cause can be in support of the US Constitution. This is definitional. Even the Democrats generally are not that far out.
The danger to the people around the entire world of this program consists of a genuine threat to their safety and security and it threatens to make the USA once the beacon of freedom and liberty into the disdained and hated form of threat to the safety and freedom of the human race. I for one am not ready for my country to lead the world down the path to a new dark age. Thomas Jefferson (3rd US President and author of the Declaration of Independence) wrote that if the American people ever forgot their dedication to personal liberty and their caring for their fellow man, they would build a new Roman Empire worse than the first. It is under construction by those who might think that defending President Bush is decent to the expense of freedom. No this is not partizan. It is AMERICAN to oppose such anti-constitutional thinking!
I am not opposed to the War in Iraq or in Afghanistan. I am opposed to the wasteful, ineffective, destructive and counterproductive way in which they are being waged. I am not opposed to bringing force to bear on those genuinely awful persons who seek to hurt the USA. I support such actions that have any real prospect of defending and securing peace for my country. I am opposed to the destruction of freedom and liberty while claiming to be defending it.
The parent of this post is absolutely correct. The coming election will see any realistic choice who might dare to challenge the forming dictatorship having his character assassinated by this NSA data. Release a little private data here or there just so that it paints a picture you want and suddenly a potent political threat becomes a laughing stock in the eyes of the general voting public.
I have read the RFP's for this program. It is total information awareness. There is no limit to it. The real issue here is the construction of a system that not even the NAZI SS could in their wildest immagination have dreamed of being able to achieve. I know there are people here who will see this in a partizan light. It isn't the case. This is a genuine threat to the existence of a democratically elected congress. It threatens the career of anyone daring to speak up on real issues. Warning to my non-USA friends, this program knows no borders!
The program has nothing what so ever to do with fighting Al Qaeda. To prove this ask yourself the following question. What since 9/11/2001 has the United States of America done under President Bush's leadership to convince the Arab peoples that their culture is broken and that they need to do something about it in order to end this endless cycle of war and destruction so that they may prosper and live in peace? (Answer: NOTHING!) Honestly this means that 100% of the activity since that date has impinged on American Freedom or destroyed American Treasure or destroyed American Soldiers and always it has encouraged and reinforced the opposition making the situation worse. Every American regardless of party should wake up to the seriousness and awful reality of this situation. At the cost of nearly 20,000 soldiers, and a trillion dollars in treasure and the expense of privacy and freedom Americans are now in more danger than they were before.
This condition is not a press report. It is a fact known from contact with soldiers who are out there dealing with it. When soldiers fresh back from Bagram Afghanistan report that "It was better than being in jail" (a quote) and the ones from Iraq report that they are garrisoned in etc, this is a lost cause by mismangement at the limit.
Mods get a life if you cannot stand the truth. Post against the point of view if you want, but don't shut up the truth.
Stock Holders!!!!! Listen up you should try being a capitalist insted of watching all the silly nonsense. Capitalism means you get paid. Check out those dividend checks. If they are not there you probably bought a pig in a poke. Quit paying attention to annual report con games and start looking at the most basic axiom of capitalist reality. Capital gets paid!
A few convenient signs that capitalists should look for. If a company is outsourcing its product, the management has decided for reasons that may or may not be obvious to investors, that the company is obsolete and is no longer functional. You are going out of business and dividends will not be coming your way any time soon. If your CEO has given himself a raise and fired your employees you know this is a fact.
Another sign is pretty simple. Check the turns of your busines. Walmart for example and it is one of the better US examples, it turns its inventory about 90 to 100 times a year. That is for a retailer very fantastic. They have conned the towns into building their stores under Industrial Development Bonds so they don't even own the stores. Their inventory is largely consignment or on 60 day payment terms. This means they are turning an inventory with at least 5% per turn net income 90 times a year (Net income per year is now 90 Times 5 = 450% per year on gross value) Since they don't even own the gross value the calculation fails to go high enough. It means in plain terms they should be paying dividends well in excess of 500% a year. If you were a capitalist, you would wake up to this and demand your check or fire the CEO. Failure to demand your dividend check is to see the CEO steal your income as his paycheck.
For those idiots in the moderation group who don't see that this is capitalism, I suggest you get a dictionary and forget your mod points. It is time for capitalism to return and Faschism to go away.
The parent post to this one really hit a profound reality. As we render human beings obsolete as we are progressively doing, we face a horrid reality.
The real issue of the 21st century is: Will be build a world where human beings serve the industrialists machines, or will we build a world where the industrialists machines serve human beings. All jokes about serving humans come to mind. This decision will be made. If it is made by ignorance, human beings will serve the industrialists machines. If it is made by wisdom, it may occur that the machines will serve mankind.
In either case the use of human beings to the system will diminish to zero. The question then will be how to we give human beings purpose etc. We already see the problems arising from this in the skuttling of careers and the human beings deciding they are worth nothing and the resultant suicide, drug abuse etc. We are facing a problem set that is completely different than the economic professors of any persuasion are discussing.
World wide productivity per hour is rising about 25% a year. At the same time industry is shedding persons from productive work at nearly the same rate. (This means individual productivity is rising 50% or more a year) We are facing a world where productivity says we should all get 1/2 a year off work to vacation and retirement should move earlier and earlier in life. We are at the same time trying to tell people to work until they drop dead. At the same time we are denying retirement benefits to the elederly.
I am just reporting the reality here. If people don't like the obvious conclusions of this reality which I note is entirely counter to the accepted logic I would suggest they wake up and see the reality. Mods if you don't like this reality get a life!
Raw price is often a good measure if an idea is wise. Not in this case. Electricity is a product sold on US Markets with many hidden cost adjustments. I will illustrate:
I live in the region served by the US TVA. Our electricity is fairly cheap. I have for years heard the private guys in the industry fussing about US TVA being a subsidy power generation system. It isn't. When the Cold War ended and the USA decided not to have more nukes, it shut down the Oak Ridge and Paducah facilities to make and enrich fuels for atomic weapons. The problem was the US TVA had a massive demand for power in these facilities. It was something like 1/4th of US total demand. As a result the US TVA got saddled with these power plants (Many not completed) and their costs without a customer. It gave us $58 Billion in non-producing debt. This could hardly be called a subsidy. It kickes up the price of electricity in the TVA region by about 25%.
The North Eastern USA uses fuel oil and LNG a lot for power generation. This would seem a straight forward cost factor. It isn't so. The USA is engaged in warfare and defense costs to the tune of nearly $500 Billion a year to make sure that oil arrives. If that cost were cranked into the cost of that oil fired and LNG fired generation the cost per KWh would be something in the order of 20 times its current level.
With this sort of economics going on, it hardly is funny business for the people of an area to simply sit down and vote with their dollars to try to end the high cost that they know is going on. Most Americans know that the high cost in blood and treasure plus national humiliation that we are paying right now is too high to pay. Most Americans realize that even though their leaders are not disposed to do something about it, they must do something about it. Paying more for "Green" "Home Grown" electricity is actually a good deal if you save your neighbor or brother from dying in a war because if the alternative. Paying more for this makes real sense if we take a look at the issues a bit more than just the utility bill.
Sure there are a lot of silly alternatitives out there and some are really silly. Recycling and fermenting manure isn't one of those silly ideas. It saves pollution. It is domestically produced. It doesn't cause war. It doesn't result in some massive super congomerate ruling your life and the benefits include making fermented material that is good for fertilizer. It is a good deal.
In comparison to coal and domestic oil this might not seem such a good deal, but it is there as well. It extends supplies and reduced damages to the earth. I know that some will deny that the damage is occuring. The US Geological Survey reports that Oil field subsidence damages topped $500 Billion a year 10 years ago. They are worse now. Mines and such also do tremendous damages most of which never come out of the fuel bill. I think it would be wise for people to think a bit before they measure everything by the price at the meter. I am not suggesting we ignore the meter either.
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A few years ago, my late father and myself conducted a 2 year study of every single school system in the State of Alabama and looked deeply into the issues of what made them tick and not tick. This resulted in a series of proposals based on what actually happens towards fixing the schools. Every single proposed solution at that time was passed except 1. That one was to actually vary the pay of the teachers and their tenure based upon the results of the standardized test progress of their students. Yes I did propose and it has gone nation wide the testing of schools by testing the progression of the students! I am the one everyone likes to hate over this.
The critics are absolutely right about the ineffective use of testing and such. My answer is shut up about the defects as an excuse not to test. Lets test the students and get better tests and better testing methods if you don't like the results. I whole heartedly support more efficient evaluation methods and any efforts that can direct teachers towards better results. The methods here are standard industrial and technological evaluation methods.
Schools are not under funded. They are grossly over funded. Teachers are not under paid except in their early career years. This may vary some from state to state but bureaucracy pays more by tenure. Lets cut this crap out that funding of the schools is the problem it isn't even the problem at all. The issue is that the system does not reward people for trying. It rewards them for expiring the clock. You get what you pay for.
The issue of Laptops in class has mostly to do with the issue of teachers being quite unwilling to adapt to the present time. Here are a set of solid proposals for the schools around the world.
Beginning about the 4th grade students should no longer carry books. They should be issued laptops. Their books should be documents on the net freely available to them. The school systems should hire the authors directly and fire the school text book companies. It would save a bloody fortune.
The issue of the style of interactive texts in the schools that is developed should be based upon an axiom my father said about teaching me the slide rule. (Yes I date to that time) He said, you may use a slide rule when the answer you get is more important than learning the method of getting the answer. This should be the objective of the design. All lessons should require the method be examined while that is what is being learned. If this is done, the tricking with cute fonts and cut and paste reports will do no good in grading.
The real matter here is design. I discussed this with the authors of www.starfall.com and their effort to teach phonics on line. (Excellent site by the way) I told them that the cute interactive graphics and funny cartoons should only work as a reward for full development of a lesson. They are doing more and more this way in time. This should set a map for people to see. One can clearly see that this is a job never done. It is a work in progress forever. That is why we will always need teachers and not just computers for training.
A note to the mods. This is the most on topic least troll and most informative listing you have ever read on this topic. If you can't see that write a criticism as a response or get a life. Otherwise this deserves every mod point you can give it. Slashdot shouldn't be a shout-down and heckle society.
With all respect intended I merely pointed out the condition. I also think that this respondent is like the people who think that medicine should work with its inventory "Just in Time". It all works until an epidemic happens then nothing is "Just in Time". We saw this a year ago where hundreds of thousands flushed out of New Orleans without their medicines and discovered that there were neither doctors nor drugs nor food nor water nor just about any essential reserve supplies. It all just about collapsed. We missed failure by inches.
Imagine if you will that we get those perfect highly efficient crops he thinks are so good. They grow on the soil extracting the nutrients so efficiently and then one day we find out that there is a disease to which they have no resistance. In a night every Cow or every Soybean or whatever in the whole world is dying. That is the formula we had when a cloned crop called potatoes grew in Ireland and in one winter they almost all rotted. Then the free traders who make the arguments discussed above hit. The twin plagues of "Free Trade" and a Fungus took down millions. The Irish Potato famine is what we know it as in history. English traders figured it was time to profit on the shortage that a total genetic volunerability in a crop produced. Mass murder was the result.
The same "Free Traders" held a party in India after WW-2. India became a synonym for starvation as a result. This sort of thinking that these natural laws are not to be followed is an insanity.
I will be much more plain here. The concept of efficiency as a God is not rational. It stands in stark defiance of the natural laws of the world. Natural systems are inefficient for reasons we often do not know. Genetic variation is there as a defense of the population. Inefficiency of soil use is part of the preservation of a feedback loop system to keep it running. Every people in history who has held to the fantasy that this is not so has lost out. The inefficiency that we see is actually part of a greater economy.
The problem in modern times is best illustrated by the fact that success in bringing in a big crop was cause for ancient peoples to all celebrate. They all knew it brought them good times. Today the man who brings in a bumper crop has to cry as the price crashes because of our false economic ideas that a chore is isolated from any other chore. These false isolation structures fool us into believing a banker makes a town rich while the farmer and factory types are just obsolete old worthless types. (You haven't stopped eating have you?)
I am no socialist. I do understand that there is a very real progress in events and life. I do understand that we must adapt. The issue is what must adapt to what. Will we build a world where the people must adapt to the engine or will we build an engine that adapts to the people? That is really the issue.
I recently took a short term contract position with the US Army Corps of Engineers in Huntsville, Alabama. I was working for a sub of SAIC. As I processed in the President of the USA decided to cut the positions of anyone coming in so BYE! Not fun! A week later the contractor observed that they had missed me signing a bunch of papers. So I came in to expost facto fill out the pre-employment agreements. I hit the NDA and such and started reading and wrote across the top NOT NO! HELL NO!. I explained to the people that I was working on some very important inventing when I took the job. Their agreement gave them rights to every invention on or off the job even if not related to the job that I worked on during the time I worked the job. I told the contractor that for less than 2 weeks work SAIC didn't buy rights to my project and frankly their company was not worth enough to buy out the patent so unless they rewrote the NDA and such they could forget it. This really sucked for them to ask such because I wasn't even working for SAIC except indirectly.
Read those contracts people! (SAIC's contracts STINK) Honestly I think that any employer who thinks he buys invention rights from people who earn less than 7 figures is probably taking advantage of people. Any employee who invents for such people is a smuck.
Actually Cloning already occurs in cows though it isn't "Old Cell" cloning. It is embryo splitting and has been done for 20 years or more.
In agriculture the holy grail is this genetically perfect item that does only what you want it to do 100% efficiently and every time. There are several serious problems with achieving this. The first is that the production of a genetically identical crop base becomes a 100% threat of pathogens exploiting a weakenss and wiping out 100% of the crop in one fell swat. This is already becoming a serious threat. Then you get into the economic issues.
If you can grow the famous bug free 100% efficient crop (It really doesn't matter what it is) and have it match the market 100% then you have the goal of the farmers. At this point the farmer earns exactly nothing because there is no skill involved, and there is no cost differential to his competitors and such. This has happened to a great extent in Cotton, Corn, Wheat and Soy. With the advent of the perfect Cotton, production rose 5 times per acre and the price dropped by 2/3rds. The result was almost collapse of any profits in farming cotton and all the profits went to the seed companies.
As the "perfect chicken" invaded the chicken houses similar situations happend to the profits in raising chickens. The industry has reached a point of nearly zero profits. If this happens in cattle then the industry will be reduced to having literally no profits for the farmers. They will have achieved the magical world where they don't have to work hard to make the perfect crop and well they will have created themselves out of a job.
Those who don't like this economic reality had best start figuring out a new way to live because this is logically the holy grail of all the economic development types. It really doesn't matter what you do, they are trying to produce this situation. It strikes me of a situation where you are cured of what you suffered from and suffering from the cure.
Don't take this as negative to the proposals, just as a report of conditions. Have fun with what you do with this reality. We are going to see a lot more of it.
I don't know about you but I learn stuff on Slashdot from time to time. I will admit the Trolls might think that they know everything but often they serve to tip me off to some pretty good stuff. Usually they get upset over good stuff.
Yes even work related stuff. For example: I worked in a facility that worked on Prediction Markets and it came up on Slashdot that some Senators were fussing about it. I knew stuff useful to the company in advance.
The issue of internet access at work and its use is a curious one. We have been allowing people to use the telephone at work for years in a limited fashion. As long as it didn't invade the work day too much it was sort of accepted. It also generally wasn't recorded.
Internet is just telephone communications. No different. Treating it differently isn't wise. The employers are right though if the use gets out of hand.
There is of course the problem of not knowing what browsing is legitimate anyway. This isn't easy to determine either. Remember that clicking on a link might be accidentally the wrong one or you might be searching a topic and get one of those trick sites listed for the Porn types. It isn't really a matter of any or filters, it is a matter of content and time.
I am going to try to explain this in very simple terms. This requires me to use very small words and simplified stuff so please don't expect the really hard core stuff here. Rest assured this stuff works!
There is a solution achieved from the Maxwell equations that says F=(B^2) * A /mu. Since for any position of a motor mu A/mu never changes relative to its state at the same position, the equation reduces to F=B^2. So far so good. Now to grade school math. You were always taught that 1 + 1 = 2. In magnets this isn't true. F = 1^2 = 1, F=(1+1)^2 = 2^2 = 4. In short 1+1=4. If one of the ones in the magnet example is a permanent magnet and one is an induced magnet, the sum is still 2^2 or 4. The price you paid to get the Force = 4 was 1! Of course in the real world nothing works 100% efficient so you probably will get a bit more like 3.5 instead of 4 but so what! YOU just put in 1 unit of energy and got out 3.5 unitis of energy. COP = 3.5! Not bad!
Now we move on to Steorn's device and rest assured it works. The math here is exactly the same but we are doing division. Steorn's device takes a field of 1 and a force of 1 and then splits it in half or more. At 1/2 split the B field to affect motion or to produce force now is 0.5 or 1/2. This means for a shield which takes up 1/2 of the B field, I can get the force for use split into two parts, one of which I pay for and the other I do not. The one I pay for is F=B^2 or F = (0.5)^2 = 0.25. Now I paid 1/4 of the energy of the unshielded permanent magnet and I reduced the torque force from it which works against me to 1/4th as well. This is for the detail people a canceling of Back EMF of a Dipole by shorting! Summing here we get 0.5 force against me when shielded and when unshielded we get 1 force for me working. (This is positional if you haven't figured out.) That's for a motor.
Now lets play with a transformer. This device can drive the magnetic field of a transformer for the energy cost of 1/4th of the magnet. At the same time it can produce flux by reversing the magnets that varies +/- 1 or a total of 2. This means we get generation of energy out of a standard coil winding equal to 2x the magnet and we paid 1/4th of the energy for the magnet. Of course this isn't going to come out at 8 times but so what if it comes out at 5 or 6. This all looks party pretty to anyone wanting energy.
So for parties out there who haul out their tired old axiums I have one final demonstration. If you suspend an object using an Electro-Magnet you can measure a direct relationship to the current needed to suspend it. Its all standard equations here. If however; you suspend the same object with a permanent magnet, it can be done indefinitely without current application from outside. The current is internal. There is no difference between an induced magnet and a permanent one. Actually they all are permanent magnets just the Induction alligns a disorganized set of magnets and a permanent magnet has them alligned already. So you can see a magnet can produce energy. In fact it does it all the time. Only now we have the mechanisms to capture this energy.
Just remember that the fact that we have not had this in the past means only that we were ignorant of the means back then. It doesn't mean it was impossible. Cleopatra could have had TV. All of the physical laws worked just as well back then as now. They just didn't know how back then.
Come on! We are all nerds here! Why hasn't anyone here gotten it? Its really simple. Biometric payment schemes are all just fancy passwords, the only problem here is that the password that is the weakest to break is one that never changes and which may be read by those in public. Your fingerprints never change and they can be read in public. Worse yet they also can be conterfitted easily by very simple technology. They also can be obeserved quietly and without intrusion as was noted by a few other posters on the issue of fingerprints being discarded everywhere.
Biometric identificiation systems may be useful as adjuncts to other systems but in the end, they are going to be as weak security as the social security number.
Does anyone sincerely think that consultants who make money from pleasing mangement are going to tell us anything but "blame the workers." I saw in this factory the fact that all they had to do was add a few active sound suppression devices and do some other minor changes to the machinery and then deafening conditions wouldn't need the plugs. By the way the factory used ear pulgs all the time. They damn well do not work well. Have any of the consultants realized that ear plugs raise ear infections over double? Everyone in this factory complied with ear plugs! Have any of the consultants ever looked at simple things like adding a baffle in the factory in a place or two? A little insulation on the roof might have worked too! How about designing a motor with a cover to keep down the noise?
Try thinking with other than your pocket book for a change. The reality is that for a few thousand dollars in changes this factory would have been safer (People need sound to communicate safely) and they could have ditched the infection causing equipment.
I saw the locations where accidents happened. The most modest acceptance of responsiblity and making a few modifications would have saved a lot. One conveyor which went into a tire shredding device could have for the addition of a photosensor device or a trip wire have saved at least 3 lives. Another location if an IR sensor array were located well, the machine would have avoided catching fire about every 2 weeks. The tire building machines could have for the addition of a photocell or two or a trip wire have saved hands and fingers.
These things would have saved lost time, injuries, speeded production and generally made things nice. But these guys will not need to worry about this now. They moved to Mexico where you can dump the people who get hurt in the ditch by the plant and shoot the family if they complain.
By the way the mid level management entirely agreed with me. They hated what was going on but they could not stop Management. I think people who don't work under these conditions generally have no idea what is going on.
I feel compelled to support the parent of this post and a few above it in their noting that it is ILLEGAL, IMMORAL and just plain TERRORISTIC of the US Government to be tapping calls without a warrant. For those who argue that there is a foreign danger, they simply do not understand what is going on. This program was never aimed at the foreign threat. It was aimed at domestic suppression. It wasn't targeted at any terrorism purpose unless you view citizens exercising their rights as terrorists towards a criminal government. I have read the RFP's on these programs. They were not limited tapping for terrorism. It was tapping everything everywhere all the time and forever.
There can only be one rational explanation of why these people wanted to avoid the special courts set up to handle proper warrants. They were against the law and for bad purpose since the special courts give very nearly carte blanche to the government requests. This is prima facia evidence of a government going far out of its way and starting to act as a Terrorist itself. In point of fact is is running a MAFIA PROTECTION RACKET. For those who don't understand, you set up a terror condition and sell protection. In this case the mobster has the luxury of not even having to hire the enforcer since Al Qaeda and others will provide the terror for the ordinary people and they just shake us down of trillions of dollars in taxes.
Please wake up people. Hurricane Katrina Relief on the US Gulf Coast (2005) has amounted to 220,000 homes needing recovery help. The current expenditures of the US Feds is $178 Billion. That breaks down for those who cannot use a calculator to $809,090 per home. The homes are not rebuilt folks and volunteers are still cleaning up. This govenment is stealing Billions of dollars every place it can from the American People. The current administration fears it will be found out and properly opposed. This is why they are doing their data acquistion programs. They are planning terror if we oppose them. Doubt me? Look at what they do every time there is an argument against them. Look and see if they have actually been effective anywhere at any time for stopping terror. They have not been. They refuse to clean up the US border situation and in point of fact are the prime instigators of the trouble. They accused community watch types (The Minuteman Project) of being terrorists.
Well we citizens are terrorists to these criminals. If we wake up and put them in jail their reign will be over. Do not make anything partizan out of this. This is pure citizenship.
I would like to discuss this in some detail. Congress Critters are you listening?
The issue here is simple and almost sinfully so. If you are to get a job working for the Government, it doesn't matter which agency, you have to provide your quailification credentials. We see them on looking for a job as a list of qualifications. This applies to contractors who supply the government as wee. This becomes a list that looks like a laundry list of the history of the agency. We programmer types will know these very well. The list goes like this:
Programmer with 15+ years Experience in Matlab.
Must have 15+ years in Military Logistics with US Army SMDC
and the list goes on. There are only two problems with this listing. Both of these cannot exist. The only person who can qualify with these "pseudo credentials" is somebody who has just retired from the army and frankly even then it is a fiction. The result is that old unqualifed failure that was just booted out of the ranks for incompetence is now the only person qualified for duty.
In the FBI this is worse not better. The results are that the FBI remains unable to respond because it cannot recruit new blood to infuse it. The situation in contracts is even worse since the bureaucrats in the Government reserve the right to pick and choose the people who will work with them on contract. The contractor doesn't get to pick his people! This makes absolutely sure that in the post 9/11/2001 world only those who failed us before 9/11/2001 can ever be "Qualified" to do any work. They are the "Experts" we hire to do our work. The resulting situation is from top to bottom the agency fails ever worse and costs ever more.
The solution is pretty simple. There needs to be a wholesale cutting from the top of the dead wood of the agencies. We need to fire about 99% of the people in management and start at the bottom rebuilding. The GS system is built the reverse of this. Bumping needs eliminated. GS people need to have manditory retirement at set ages and terms of service. The legislative support of contractors needs changed towards performance controls and away from managing personnel of contractors. Frankly the US agencies excepting where sensative data or methods are involved should have no influence over hiring of contractors. Even then it should only be security issues and not the qualifications at issue. Contractor companies should have to be performing based on results and paid accordingly.
Had the FBI contract had a penalty of $250,000 per day for failure to perform the results would be in hand and done now. This by the way is typical contracting rules in the civilian arena. I have worked on such civilian contract rules for years. It gets work done and on time.
As it sits it is typical for contracts to demand 10 years experience in .net. (Programmers will have to laugh their heads off on this one. .Net isn't that old itself)
Having worked as RN in a large factory which had Lost Time Injuries approximately every 3 days.... and which could have saved a fortune if modest changes had been made, I have discussed this with management.
The motivation of the management who makes the decisions is one of control and temper. It really does make sense to make things safer. This factory could have saved about $100,000 a week had it improved safety. They just didn't want to do it. You see a worker was only paid about $50,000 a year and as such these people didn't cost management enough to be worth anything to them.
I watched the expensive management employees get protected while the workers got nothing. This was a tire factory. They made $1,350,000 a day even with this injury expense. It may be strange to some but actually the workers were too cheap to be worth anything. The loss of a life about every year or so was an acceptable cost to management. So what if you pay off the family with a damage claim of $500,000 or so. Blow it off. These people are worthless in the eyes of management...
Saving $5,200,000 a year simply didn't enter their mind as worth that much effort. I proposed that we use the medical data to extract which machines should be fixed. I offered to observe the machines and look at what was going on. They had no interest. One major loss to them was hearing losses. The addition of a few minor changes could have nearly silenced the factory. They couldn't care less. Another major loss was loss of hands and fingers and intermittently a person in a machine. Simple design changes in jobs would have improved production and saved lifes. They didn't care because it might "bother" their situation. It was an attitude that the "Free Trade" advocates refuse to recognize. Burried in the true motivations of many rich persons is a hatred of other social classes and a view that they are property not people. This is why they will not embrace safety technology.
I think it is interesting that the election cycle is going on and troubles are growing. Has anyone noticed the damage the stealing (taxes) of nearly 3 trillion US dollars from the US economy to maintain what are deliberately totally ineffective and counterproductive security measures has done to the US Economy? Has anyone noticed that the relationship between bureaucrats and the citizens is exactly the same as between the fox and the hens...? Has anyone checked the bills under consideration or markup in the US Senate, US House or the British Parlimentary houses? Has anyone noticed unusual regulations in the Federal Register or the British similar structures? (I am just wondering if anyone is awake out there. Mods don't get mad I am asking!)
I am not suggesting the Islamic nuts are no danger, but has anyone noticed that there is a clear PROFILE that police could use if we were not being politically correct? (Young Pakistani [racial] males who were trained in Pakistan -- Been to Pakistan lately anyone? They were!) Has anyone noticed that detection of very strong peroxide isn't hard? Proxidase works and a potato peel has it cheap.
Has anyone noticed that it isn't hard to ARM YOUR CITZENS or to TRAIN CITIZENS to defend against such types if anyone was interested? Has anyone noticed that if the police were to just pick up reported criminals it might work? It usually does for everything else these trouble makers do.
This whole situation has the look of Dumb and Dumber to me. Does anyone else see the same?
One of the unique realities of living in the area of Huntsville, Alabama (MSFC) is that you get contact with people who are actually doing things. If you make the right contacts, you know who and what is going on. Here is what is going on regards to NASA and the original data from the Apollo missions. More precisely what has gone on.
The US officials at NASA ordered the destruction of all of the records associated with the Apollo Missions after the last flight to the moon. The Chief of the Records realized how stupid this was and he conspired with certian persons to have some 8 tons of records moved to a secured location with persons in custody who would not tell where the records were or admit they existed. The reason I know of this is that I had extended contact with the man who set this up. The reason he told me was that the discussion of returning to the moon was coming up about 8 years ago and NASA sent a some men out to see him asking if the rumor was true that he had done this and where they could get the records. He told them it didn't exist but on my arrival he was spitting mad at the idiots at NASA over wanting the records. He feared that they might be destroyed if NASA got them again. He felt they were priceless historic documents and that they must be protected. I do not expect them to appear for 100 years or more due to this.
Contained in these records are films, data stores, and all of the technical documents for operation of the Apollo System. Why these were ordered destroyed he felt was a very malicious act. The real reason for the order was that the US Government at the time wanted to destroy the ability to return to the moon any time in the near future. They possessed about 5 rockets able to go and they wanted nobody able to operate them. The also did not want any more able to be fabricated. This discloses international agreements that involved the USSR and other parties that demanded the destruction of this data.
Believe this or not if you will but this is in fact what happened. This discloses the very dirty nature of the behavior of some "well respected" parties in the world. I cannot hope to have people on this forum believe me, but maybe some will. The reason I was present was I was working as RN at the time and I was making Home Health visits 2 times a day to the home. Frankly I was more trusted than the NASA people by this former high ranking NASA man. My experience with such men has included former German Rocket Scientists and many others. When you meet these people you learn what has really gone on.
This man who was the chief of the record keeping for the Apollow program told me how a year before the Sputnik launch the President of the United States had ordered the entire US Army Missile program lab at what is now Marshall dismantled and taken to the dump. When the Sputnik launch panicked the Americans, He and others had to go to the Base Dump and with their own money buy back the "Scrap" equipment in order to get the lab going again. Even the first test stand they built was built this way. It is now an historic monument!
The description of some details here is slightly modified so as to keep some nasty people off the trail and to protect the records. The title of the position the man held is descriptive but not the real title. I am not sure if this man is still alive and I don't want to cause him or his associates any trouble. There have been several attempts to secure these records to have them destroyed over the years since 1973.
A much better explanation is here
A person only has a limited amount of clotting factors in their body at any one time. If you consume it in one area doing one job, it is not available to do the job elsewhere. This isn't a big inventory and does not replace fast. In any case clotting deliberately may have value but it has a cost.
The process may need contact now, but rest assured accoustic technology would allow with wave mixing this process to be applied without contact. The process of wave mixing and spread spectrum allows low frequency carriers to carry higher frequencies. Also shock waves with infinite harmonics do the exact same thing (AKA explosions) so the technology will get perfected.
Just to clarify the point a bit of the parent post: Imagine a neighborhood of nest eggs like the brokerage add that is common these days or the Freddy Mac add. Then imagine a big rich guy's nest egg sent to roll that neighborhood flat. Seeing a trail of destruction of entire towns or communities crushed as his nest egg moves around you get the point.
A shade of experience might come in handy. I was researching a lot of stuff involving magnets for issues of motors etc. I had no interest in Magnetic Therapy though I had heard of it for years. I generally regarded it to be a bit silly.
Then one day my 81 year old mother with 3 fractures in her left lower leg and diabetes who had been told she would never walk again called me because her leg was swollen about 2 times its normal size. I came over to help her as best I could. On a wild chance I placed 2 magnets on her leg. It was just to see what would happen. In about 60 seconds the swelling was gone! (That doesn't happen with the best of drugs folks!) After 1 week of exposure to the magnets, X-Rays showed a leg that had not healed at all in 3 months to have the region near where the magnet was, completely healed fracture and all. More astounding was seeing the X-Ray! It showed the calcification in her Osteoporosis (Ghost Bone)to be fully restored in that area about the size of a soft ball where the magnet was kept on her leg. After that we moved magnets to cover her other fracture locations. In 4 weeks they were healed. The neuropathy she has (Pain from nerve regrowth patterns and IDDM) is only successfully relieved by magnets. Drugs don't do it.
I went looking hard into the physics of how this works. Here is the process. There is a derivation of the Maxwell Equations that states Force = B field squared times the Area / the universal magnetic constant. Since Area and the constant drop out under normal conditions the Force = B Squared. The Mitochondria of the Cells (Energy Power house of the cells) are small DC motors and their efficiency goes up if their magnets are stronger. Adding an external field adds to the B field and thus squares the sum as the power of the mitochondria. But it was even more. Since 1799 it has been known that transmutation (fusion for you physics types) is done in living things. Chickens in Wales were found putting out more Calcium than they were eating. This has since been validated extensively including 2 Nobel Prizes and work done by the US Army and by the French nuclear agency. The mitochondria of the cells does this transmutation. This means that they are small particle accelerators with microscopic "Wiggler" magnet sets. Adding an external field strengthens them. As such the cells can do their work more effectively this way.
The pain relief therefore from magnets isn't like standard medical drug pain relief where we suppress a function. Rather a magnet relieves pain, and I now know it with my arthritic back, by causing damaged cells that are weak and which might cause pain by disintergration to be able to accelerate their function and recover. This in medicine is the magic pill that doesn't do wrong. It is real. I know about this healing ability personally from my mother as well as myself. I kicked a toe and injured it severely. One night with a magnet taped to it and it healed.
Why then all the discussion if it works? It is quite simple. We didn't have good strong magnets until recently the therapy was unreliable because it diminishes by the inverse square law in distance and the old magnets had no range. The new N-50 magnets have the range. The ones I was using have a 200 gauss field at over 4 inches away. Point blank they have 14,700 gauss and are massively powerful. Also most experiments have not been sized to the test subjects.
Now just some pure physics stuff for people out there: There is absolutely no difference between a permanent magnet and an induced one. All magnets are already resident in the media and induced ones are merely aimed in response to the external field. All magnets do represent strong electrical currents. The ones I am using for therapy would correspond to approximately 1 hp of current driving an induced magnet. The process by which a magnet works is that it is a diode in the ether. I know the Einstein types out there don't believe in the ether. They also don't know how a magnet works. They
Ah Ha! My chance to get modded into oblivion by those who don't know anything!
XML is a tagging system. It may be useful for the transmission of data between dissimilar systems but even there it is a crappy methodology. It bloats the data with massive tags, if you parse it in anything but a linear fashion, it becomes a recursive method to make processes take forever and isn't worth anything more than a flat file with a table at the top to tell you where things are. XML only handles ASCII and doesn't do that very well. In fact it really goofs up when you get down to numbers. Imagine 12 types of nodes! (Reality if you have run the parser) It isn't even logically linear in operation. XML eats internet bandwidth like it is going out of style.
As to the "Silver Bullet" theory. Well XML is a whole lot better than a secret proprietary methodology, but that could have been solved by simply telling the file format.
What is going on is something a lot of us older programmers have known for a long time. We see subsituted for skill, planning and ability for massive structures that eat memory, and they do the job, sometimes and slowly. I remember open discussions that memeory would eventually expand to the point that we didn't have to worry about it in programming. Of course that geometrically degraded the performance. Sure you have enough memory now but what are you using it for?
I am replying because this is fair to note that just because the NAZI's did something doesn't mean it was wrong. That logic is entirely correct. The metric that the intent to collect data on everyone because you can trust noone and you must control them with information is 100% intended to be obvious. Eisenhower left office warning of the "Military Industrial Complex" and its real dangers. I could quote many other statemen as well.
Other posts noted the evils of Stalin. The final end of this process will be, no matter how well intentioned, exactly what the NAZI's and Stalin did to even higher efficiency. This data will form into the hands of those who use it to manipulate and control. This will not be accidental either. I have read the RFP's. I looked at bidding on them and my morals would have nothing to do with the projects because they obviously were evil from the start.
The most basic statement I can make to those who defend such awful programs is this: On 911 my freedom and my prosperity were not the problem, they were then and remain to this day, the solution! There was not nor ever was any probable cause to suspect me or my countrymen in the USA of such awful stuff. There was then and is now an increasing probable cause to suspect the policing powers of deliberately failing to do their job and failing to answer to the just and proper complaints of the citizens. Every day our police powers become more and more invasive and every day our government further refuses to enforce long constituted laws. These to be blunt are cause for war by the citizens against the US Government. I am no advocate of war. However; I note that the very charges in the US Declaration of Independence as cause for independence and for war to defend it are operative here. Read it for your self if you doubt me.
As to be being non-partizan here. Even the Republican Leadership in the congress is seeing this and is starting to speak out on this. For the Bushies to think this is partizan is for them to be their own party and not Republicans. A Republican is by definition of the term, one who supports the Constitutional Federal Republic of the United States of America. To support this program places one squarely as an enemy of the Constitution a document that one should not forget that the President of the United States is sworn to Preserve, Protect and Defend. No person who supports the search of the person documents and effects of another person without probable cause can be in support of the US Constitution. This is definitional. Even the Democrats generally are not that far out.
The danger to the people around the entire world of this program consists of a genuine threat to their safety and security and it threatens to make the USA once the beacon of freedom and liberty into the disdained and hated form of threat to the safety and freedom of the human race. I for one am not ready for my country to lead the world down the path to a new dark age. Thomas Jefferson (3rd US President and author of the Declaration of Independence) wrote that if the American people ever forgot their dedication to personal liberty and their caring for their fellow man, they would build a new Roman Empire worse than the first. It is under construction by those who might think that defending President Bush is decent to the expense of freedom. No this is not partizan. It is AMERICAN to oppose such anti-constitutional thinking!
I am not opposed to the War in Iraq or in Afghanistan. I am opposed to the wasteful, ineffective, destructive and counterproductive way in which they are being waged. I am not opposed to bringing force to bear on those genuinely awful persons who seek to hurt the USA. I support such actions that have any real prospect of defending and securing peace for my country. I am opposed to the destruction of freedom and liberty while claiming to be defending it.
The parent of this post is absolutely correct. The coming election will see any realistic choice who might dare to challenge the forming dictatorship having his character assassinated by this NSA data. Release a little private data here or there just so that it paints a picture you want and suddenly a potent political threat becomes a laughing stock in the eyes of the general voting public.
I have read the RFP's for this program. It is total information awareness. There is no limit to it. The real issue here is the construction of a system that not even the NAZI SS could in their wildest immagination have dreamed of being able to achieve. I know there are people here who will see this in a partizan light. It isn't the case. This is a genuine threat to the existence of a democratically elected congress. It threatens the career of anyone daring to speak up on real issues. Warning to my non-USA friends, this program knows no borders!
The program has nothing what so ever to do with fighting Al Qaeda. To prove this ask yourself the following question. What since 9/11/2001 has the United States of America done under President Bush's leadership to convince the Arab peoples that their culture is broken and that they need to do something about it in order to end this endless cycle of war and destruction so that they may prosper and live in peace? (Answer: NOTHING!) Honestly this means that 100% of the activity since that date has impinged on American Freedom or destroyed American Treasure or destroyed American Soldiers and always it has encouraged and reinforced the opposition making the situation worse. Every American regardless of party should wake up to the seriousness and awful reality of this situation. At the cost of nearly 20,000 soldiers, and a trillion dollars in treasure and the expense of privacy and freedom Americans are now in more danger than they were before.
This condition is not a press report. It is a fact known from contact with soldiers who are out there dealing with it. When soldiers fresh back from Bagram Afghanistan report that "It was better than being in jail" (a quote) and the ones from Iraq report that they are garrisoned in etc, this is a lost cause by mismangement at the limit.
Mods get a life if you cannot stand the truth. Post against the point of view if you want, but don't shut up the truth.
Stock Holders!!!!! Listen up you should try being a capitalist insted of watching all the silly nonsense. Capitalism means you get paid. Check out those dividend checks. If they are not there you probably bought a pig in a poke. Quit paying attention to annual report con games and start looking at the most basic axiom of capitalist reality. Capital gets paid!
A few convenient signs that capitalists should look for. If a company is outsourcing its product, the management has decided for reasons that may or may not be obvious to investors, that the company is obsolete and is no longer functional. You are going out of business and dividends will not be coming your way any time soon. If your CEO has given himself a raise and fired your employees you know this is a fact.
Another sign is pretty simple. Check the turns of your busines. Walmart for example and it is one of the better US examples, it turns its inventory about 90 to 100 times a year. That is for a retailer very fantastic. They have conned the towns into building their stores under Industrial Development Bonds so they don't even own the stores. Their inventory is largely consignment or on 60 day payment terms. This means they are turning an inventory with at least 5% per turn net income 90 times a year (Net income per year is now 90 Times 5 = 450% per year on gross value) Since they don't even own the gross value the calculation fails to go high enough. It means in plain terms they should be paying dividends well in excess of 500% a year. If you were a capitalist, you would wake up to this and demand your check or fire the CEO. Failure to demand your dividend check is to see the CEO steal your income as his paycheck.
For those idiots in the moderation group who don't see that this is capitalism, I suggest you get a dictionary and forget your mod points. It is time for capitalism to return and Faschism to go away.
The parent post to this one really hit a profound reality. As we render human beings obsolete as we are progressively doing, we face a horrid reality.
The real issue of the 21st century is: Will be build a world where human beings serve the industrialists machines, or will we build a world where the industrialists machines serve human beings. All jokes about serving humans come to mind. This decision will be made. If it is made by ignorance, human beings will serve the industrialists machines. If it is made by wisdom, it may occur that the machines will serve mankind.
In either case the use of human beings to the system will diminish to zero. The question then will be how to we give human beings purpose etc. We already see the problems arising from this in the skuttling of careers and the human beings deciding they are worth nothing and the resultant suicide, drug abuse etc. We are facing a problem set that is completely different than the economic professors of any persuasion are discussing.
World wide productivity per hour is rising about 25% a year. At the same time industry is shedding persons from productive work at nearly the same rate. (This means individual productivity is rising 50% or more a year) We are facing a world where productivity says we should all get 1/2 a year off work to vacation and retirement should move earlier and earlier in life. We are at the same time trying to tell people to work until they drop dead. At the same time we are denying retirement benefits to the elederly.
I am just reporting the reality here. If people don't like the obvious conclusions of this reality which I note is entirely counter to the accepted logic I would suggest they wake up and see the reality. Mods if you don't like this reality get a life!
Raw price is often a good measure if an idea is wise. Not in this case. Electricity is a product sold on US Markets with many hidden cost adjustments. I will illustrate:
I live in the region served by the US TVA. Our electricity is fairly cheap. I have for years heard the private guys in the industry fussing about US TVA being a subsidy power generation system. It isn't. When the Cold War ended and the USA decided not to have more nukes, it shut down the Oak Ridge and Paducah facilities to make and enrich fuels for atomic weapons. The problem was the US TVA had a massive demand for power in these facilities. It was something like 1/4th of US total demand. As a result the US TVA got saddled with these power plants (Many not completed) and their costs without a customer. It gave us $58 Billion in non-producing debt. This could hardly be called a subsidy. It kickes up the price of electricity in the TVA region by about 25%.
The North Eastern USA uses fuel oil and LNG a lot for power generation. This would seem a straight forward cost factor. It isn't so. The USA is engaged in warfare and defense costs to the tune of nearly $500 Billion a year to make sure that oil arrives. If that cost were cranked into the cost of that oil fired and LNG fired generation the cost per KWh would be something in the order of 20 times its current level.
With this sort of economics going on, it hardly is funny business for the people of an area to simply sit down and vote with their dollars to try to end the high cost that they know is going on. Most Americans know that the high cost in blood and treasure plus national humiliation that we are paying right now is too high to pay. Most Americans realize that even though their leaders are not disposed to do something about it, they must do something about it. Paying more for "Green" "Home Grown" electricity is actually a good deal if you save your neighbor or brother from dying in a war because if the alternative. Paying more for this makes real sense if we take a look at the issues a bit more than just the utility bill.
Sure there are a lot of silly alternatitives out there and some are really silly. Recycling and fermenting manure isn't one of those silly ideas. It saves pollution. It is domestically produced. It doesn't cause war. It doesn't result in some massive super congomerate ruling your life and the benefits include making fermented material that is good for fertilizer. It is a good deal.
In comparison to coal and domestic oil this might not seem such a good deal, but it is there as well. It extends supplies and reduced damages to the earth. I know that some will deny that the damage is occuring. The US Geological Survey reports that Oil field subsidence damages topped $500 Billion a year 10 years ago. They are worse now. Mines and such also do tremendous damages most of which never come out of the fuel bill. I think it would be wise for people to think a bit before they measure everything by the price at the meter. I am not suggesting we ignore the meter either.