Mod the parent of this post up! He deserves a 5. The trust us mentality of the government bureaucrats has cost the freedom of many and the lives of others. Distrust of the government is the right and moral obligation of every citizen, because it is all that keeps tyrrany in check. With Hurricane Katrina the bureaucrats wouldn't let the citizens boats in for rescue efforts and hundreds died awaiting a helicopter. The boats were turned back because the drivers were not "qualified" by FEMA. Should we trust this sort of behavior? Yes, we can trust it to kill us.
In the justice the issue of fact presented in court is the whole issue. You must be able to try the "witness". This is why "rape shield laws" really protect the criminal from prosecution. They prevent trying the witness and thus we must either take the claim on faith or forget it. The inability to try a witness in technical evidence is to give the state an assured conviction without a trial. One may as well install a vending machine for justice. With modern computers the taking of their output as evidence is and act of extreme faith. One must trust the input, trust the process and trust the custody of the whole system including documents which are virtual in the first place. Video evidence for example may appear totally intact, but with modern edit technology it can be a computer induced hallucination.
I want DUI's locked up! But I don't want officers running a vending machine for justice either. The more computer dependent these machines become, the more certain the tests they presume to do can be faked, altered or be just plain wrong and to test the programming becomes as important as asking the arresting officer questions. Educated Jurors must keep this stuff in mind.
The state pays officers and prosecutors to get convictions. They will unemploy one who loses often. There is a high incentive to fake and change evidence. The state has found it very cheap to hire very simple minded officers and load them with gadgets designed for the purpose of conviction. It makes money for the state and makes officials look like they are doing their job.
In England something like 800,000 traffic cameras exist. They got fabulous photos of terrorists doing their damage, but nothing could be done to stop them before hand. This because nobody was really watching. Cameras you see lack the ability to suspect (Probable Cause). The effect of these cameras has been an increase in crime and danger. This because the officers are no longer actually doing their job. We have to change this thinking that the machine is right. It exists to avoid being right.
I don't suppose that reminding the crowd that Archamedes had quite a history building some pretty massive things and doing so using some pretty cute tricks with some really high math is in order. I am quite sure that Archamedes was aware of the solar reflection and other issues. It is my understanding that he used bronze mirrors of very large size that were essentially slightly parabolic with a focal range about 1 mile. I do know he possessed the math, and architectural skills to do this. This is typical of ratio projection used in buildings.
I do know the results in history of this man's work are pretty well established. He pretty much set about and did whatever he intended to do. As a scientist he was neither politically correct nor foolish. He was the best of his time and frankly would have been pretty good today.
The Mythbusters assumed that some things were too big to do. This would not have been a problem for a man who engineered the roofing of big Greek buildings.
I recently spent 3+ years in Hybred research. Here generally are the facts.
Hybreds fit well with two use conditions. (1)Extremely regular stop and go like some city commutes and like a route driver for UPS or similar. (2)Extremely regular high speed long duration driving. The rest of the conditions they sink fast. Essentially the problems arise because batteries are maxed at about 9% thermal efficiency. The hybrid functions well where the engine power curves may be maximized against what would otherwise be a questionable driving use of the energy. The high speed driving is because the engine is at a low power setting in that condition. It is better to turn it on and off and set the generation engine at high power settings. The route driver is advantaged because the engine may be turned off automatically and on by demand with the power set to the high setting at the peak of the power curve.
If I haven't confused you yet, batteries suck. That is an understatement. There are several media that are better than the batteries we use in such vehicles but they have yet to be applied. My best advice on the whole issue is that generally Hybreds are good test beds for other technology. In most uses they are impractical devices as now presented. It should be noted that most modern trains and mine vehicles are hybreds. These are in use the precise cases I noted above. (Route drivers and long distance runners) My advice would be to wait for the fuel reformer/fuel cell technology it has the best of all worlds. It fits all conditions, operates at the top of the efficiency curve in all use conditions, can be scaled and is durable. Best of all this oncoming tech is almost here.
I'll volunteer to settle this argument once and for all. Just look at the whole state of the Eastern USA because a hurricane took out the relatively rural areas in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas. The whole east is strangled for fuel. Their shops are in trouble for trade goods because the ports are in trouble. (I know someone who is going to cough up that New Orleans was involved -- relevant to this not)
Cities exist to sit asside trade routes and strangle the country production people if they dane to try to assume the profits they have worked to earn. Its called TAXES if you don't know what I am talking about.
Regards monorails etc...,. These were excellent ideas but the monorail was never extended to enough areas, so it suffered with intermodal problems. This is altogether the problem with most so called efficient systems of transport that are not personal cars. The advantage of a personal car is that it goes from A to B without any transshipment intermodal problems. Every other system is failing because of this fact. If a system were made that would pick up your car and transport it rapidly without a big dely in the transition then return it to the local network similarly such a system would have a real chance.
Frankly designers of "mass Transit" have a critical error. It is all individual transport. We need a system that picks up individuals and delivers them to their destination without delay or further interchange. Automated driving systems for cars solves this problem. [HINT HINT!]
There are numberous models for development of alternatives to the current system of fueling things. Some involve dramatic jumps in efficiency. Others involve recovery of system waste. Other models involve outside sourcing of the energy from "conventional sources" while still others involve unique technologies for using energy in the structure of matter and the universe. Probably improving efficiency is the front line for action at this time. All other methodologies probably take too long for immediate results.
A dramatic jump in thermal efficiency of heat engines associated with power generation in cars etc is really quite easy. Modern triple recovery turbines produce 65% thermal efficiency. Fuel Reformer/Fuel Cell technology has the same efficiency. This is compared to the approximately 18% from modern car engines. This is a case of changing engines. Fuel Reformer/Fuel Cell technology has the advantage here of being nearly infinitely throttleable. Its problem is the core cost of the factories to build it. (This needs a change in tax policy -- Read pass the Fair Tax. www.fairtax.org) Turbine technology applies better to hybrid or to extreme steady uses like long haul trucking. Both of these technologies have an advantage of being able to adapt to a wide range of fuel sources.
Sourcing outside of conventional sources is also quite easy. A Standard "Heat Pump" could be used to drive a sterling cycle engine and would have a COP over 3. There is a lot of discussion of magnetic devices that essentially do with solid state the same process. Cold fusion which is clearly a normal natural lightning process has great potential. I have witnessed 5 seconds of sustained entirely natural fusion from a lightning bolt. (REALLY SCARY STUFF -- a 30 foot diameter ball lightning popping and smapping off small balls etc) There is talk of many such devices in many areas. They all seem to work and all seem to tick off the physics community who tries to deny that they exist.
I know of several persons who have done very spectacular work in the field of energy improvements. These range from storage devices to actual development of new energy sources. Almost all of these have come to nothing in the face of a banking system wedded to the Oil Industry. Having run a small business myself and having left the industry because of bankers preventing the prospects of rational growth in order to protect other investments of theirs, I understand this completely. For those who think you can offer energy and profits and get a job, join the line behind those with better mouse traps. It just isn't so that a working invention equals success.
Out of kindness to some readers I will note that I owned a millwork business and apartments. I left the millwork business because even with perfect credit and large equity to assure payment, I could not get loans to be able to grow. The tax laws prevent equity funding. The bankers were protecting their friends from competition! In the Apartment business I for profit and paying all bills 100% on time found my credit cut off during the S&L disaster as they funded people who didn't pay and broke their institutions. Never say this stuff about "Free Enterprise" is real. The whole system is very much rigged and your money cannot buy it. The inventors of good new technology run into the fact that 80% or more of all investment in the world is in Energy Technology that will be obsolete if they accomplish their goal. Freeing Mankind by a benevolent energy methodology is absolutely against the value of these investments of our world financial institutions.
This isn't troll its just the facts. I spent 3 years recently researching Hybrid Vehicle technology. Frankly there is lots of working new stuff out there (generally no the hybrids). The problem is the financial people who stand to lose trillions of dollars to human success. Look at the USA right now (9/23/2005). The country is hobbled by two hurricanes hitting the oil infrastructure. Why hasn't new stuff been built and spread out so it cannot be volunerable? (This banking stuff!)
Well to really muck things up here takes some curiosity. Lets assume that the conclusions are correct and we proceed to rebuild New Orleans...?!!! If we assume that global warming is going to raise ocean levels or that it is just going to heat up the ocean, will New Orleans is going, going..... Gone! Er.. Blub, blub blub
Of course none of this could be assumed to be from the fact that the Mississippi delta like most others in the world is sinking into the sea.
But even if this is wrong we could still be doing a lot of stupid stuff. For example: What happens to the earth when you suck out the oil and 100 times more brine. Does the earth sink? What happens to the tons of toxic heavy metals we bring up and pave our roads with. Just for kicks is it possible that we have more serious things to deal with?
And the oil industry will pump the support right out from under the city sinking the "Strongest City in all of America" beneath the waves. So unless its a submarine, don't buy there. New Orleans should be renamed New Atlantis.
The level of collapse that is occuring in many locations is pretty profound. In Alabama in the Coal Fields where they extract Natural Gas, Mountains have been lowered more than 20 feet in a single year. At Oak Hills in California the drop there over a long period of time is something close to 70 feet. In a Gas Field off of Russia (Pacific Ocean) they lowered the ocean bottom 25 feet and more in the field in just one year.
The answer is that the area is collapsing. Yes it is (for the oil fields). Of course some areas may be more able to take it than others.
Latest Data shows that the arc of Chandeleur Islands shielding New Orleans has sunk so that the storm completely removed them. They are nothing but shoals now.
The National Geographic spelled it out in Oct 2004! This disaster is about 1 part natural and about 9 parts man made suicide.
It begins with the city of New Orleans sinking into muck by natural processs of settling. It continues with the flood control stopping more muck from recovering this in the name of flood control. All of that might have been bad enough but then came the oil men. The Oil Industry removed from the region enough Oil, Natural Gas and Brine to sink the region at nearly a foot a year. No amount of levees and preparation can recover us from this damage. If we slake our thirst for energy the area will continue to sink.
For those who don't know, when you withdraw oil and gas, somtimes 100 times the amount of material withdrawn for use is withdrawn as brine or other stuff. Sometimes it is more. The Norphlet structure of southern Alabama, Mississippi, Most of Lousiana and part of Texas is actually sliding at about 1 foot a year into the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the Oil and Gas extraction. This is causing earthquakes and much more. Nearly 1/2 of the State of Lousiana is sinking into the Gulf for this reason. Sure the US Army Corps of Engineers flood control efforts are making this worse but the culprit is Oil/Gas operations. The loss of land here is due to the industrial activities here. I am sure somebody will disagree but they cannot change the facts here. I am not against Oil/Gas production. I just report what is going on.
The situation in New Orleans is definitely one of FEMA Incompetence to the point of Criminal Negligence. For example they have yet to place a call to the civilians to ask for small boats to handle the situation. This is our Dunkirk but nobody is calling for the boats. Make no mistake this is the Bureaucratic mentality at work here. Bureaucracy is probably the only force on the planet able to destroy the human race.
The FEMA and other government types have also neglected that as an echo of the situation the trucking of the South Eastern USA is shut down for lack of fuel. This is seriously hampering the recovery and threatens mass civil disruptions and possible mass starvation. The situation is most serious.
The disaster by Hurricane Katrina which left me without power for 3 days and now threatens my fuel supply indefinitely is for the most part a man made disaster. It is about 9 parts suicide and 1 part homicide. (Storm being the homicide) Please don't mistake me for having no sympathy with the hurt people. I care about them a lot.
Without going into many details, New Orleans put the kife in its gut over a century ago. It drove it deeper and deeper daily and ignored the consequences. It ranges from how the river was managed to the development of the Oil Industry which has pumped the city lower and lower every day.
The damage to America in general was the same. Our tax code told American Business to get rid of Inventory and to go to Just In Time(JIT) business models. Thus we lost any local stores of fuel and any national reserves. We lost our refinery capacity and we lost the reserves of spare parts for almost anything. JIT should be rephrased in an emergency to Just Immediate Termination. We have no reserves of medical supplies. We have no spare parts and we lack the basic supplies despite $3 Trillion in Homeland Security spending to do anything. Now the recovery is grinding to a halt for lack of fuel and the whole country is in danger of catastrophic economic collapse.
Storms will come and go but the INCOME TAX continues to grind America every day. It tells our industry to move out of the country and this disaster will accelerate the trend. The FAIR TAX will not do these evil deeds to us. It will allow fix for a profit because it allows profits.
I suppose answering at this late date with a few more details is probably not much value, but here goes.
Women as a general rule can identify some 3000 or more colors whereas men generally can identify if they are not color blind something like 100 or less. Of course there are men who can do as much as the woman but they are rare. (I am one who sees the colors but most men do not) Women as a general rule have just about 10 times the fineness of object recognition and they tolerate tedious jobs at nearly 10 times the rate men do. Sorry for the guys out there who think this is cultural, it isn't! This is biologic.
I know a sub post tries to argue some other issues. These are the reason the computer jobs involving hardware have for the most part gone to China and far east locations. The employers there can hire women and the tolerate the jobs that are extremely tedious and they see very fine detail. I learned this from men who were moving factories there. They had ones in the USA and they were not moving for wages contrary to the discussion. It was this feature of women and the fact that US Law forbid women only hiring.
In many cases the issue of intelligence differences is probably the best way to describe men vs women. Women are different than men. Their sensory perception and attention focus is as a group very different from men. Visual Acuity falls as a no contest for women. Attention to tedious jobs falls as a no contest for women. Mathematical and Logical Thinking falls to men each of these differences have pretty wide differences. These are well documented.
As to the racial differences these too are unbelievably well documented. There are wide racial differences in intelligence and behavior. These include temper and acuity in understanding of various subjects. Contrary to the test bias claims these can be verified by some pretty basic tests that are done at birth and measure only function. Being and RN I have been trained in such evaluations. If you will note, I am treading lightly here because I am not telling who is who. The data has been there for a very long time that there are big differences. These are not some esoteric minor inflections. They range from edge perception detection of motion being present in nearly all persons of some races to not appearing in persons of other races until about age 1. These range from temper differences of response being quite passive to outright violent to the same stimuli. Yes the Irish are more tempermental than the English. (Hense the "Fighting Irish") Race you see is not just black and white.
To be more specific, asians who are yellow or light brown skinned (generally because there are some exception races there) are the highest scoring on tests of visual acuity and moderate temper. They also score highest on mathematical skills. European whites range from this level in the north Germanic areas down to average in central europe and much below average in the balkins. (Hense the English word Moron, coming from people from the Albaina region -- Look up city names for fun folks) These of course are group averages. Black races have considerable ranges as well. I suppose I would be called a racist if I note their levels and so to prevent the Moderator Idiot curve from hitting me I will let readers guess here.
Have fun people, there is a wide and quite well known set of variances in people by race and by sex. But to print it is to suffer unscientific assault and to be wiped out in Political Correctness. Mods... Get a Life and quit calling Troll the facts.
I suppose the concept of military intelligence should be redefined as an oxymoron. Those who think otherwise should be assembled for the purchace of mountain land in florida and I have a fine bridge for them to buy in Brooklyn.
I once heard of a government lab where the Chinese, Russians and Indians tried every night to crack the lab security. So every night the lab simply disconnected the ethernet cable connecting them to the base network and thworted the attackes most successfully. You see the govenment bureaucrats in Russia, China and India went to work every day and tried to crack. Naturally being on the other side of the world the American lab wasn't open during their work day. Of course this security measure was not part of the US Base security plan. It was applied by some caring Americans. Of course this story couldn't be true could it?
Of course it couldn't also be true that every computer on that American Base was to have the same top domain password so that the boss could look into all the computers for preserving base security. And it couldn't be true that such wide open security was required as a matter of policy. The same base couldn't have prohibited Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird while forcing the use of IE for "Security".
This of course is all delusional fiction well, maybe?
This is the beginning of the export from control by the medical establishment of Pulse Oximetry. These devices have been for quite some time used in hospitals.
Now if we could get extracted from the clutches of the US-FDA the control over such devices expecially the optical devices used for Blood Sugar Monitoring which are made in the USA and cannot be sold here but are used world wide.... *Yes I am an RN*
I am in possession of a copy of Thomas Jefferson's work on redoing into modern (by the times) english of the bible. The US Constitution and etc were written by very strong christians. I know that this will not sit well with some but TJ was on of the guys the other side holds up as evidence of some of the non-christian forces and he wasn't. Get a life if you can't stand the facts.
The first ten amendments were pushed in the face of extreme efforts by the anti-religious (French Revolutionaries etc) to make sure that people were free.
I "love" the "evidence" police on/.(I lothe them frankly) Why can't they just shut up and allow a person to express an opinion. The opinion may or may not be based in fact and whats more the person might just know the facts but of course.... (Well enough on that)
The issue of a person being genetically tested and as such being descriminated against in hiring because they might tend to get a disease etc is a serious problem. It suffers from the problem that such science right now is more opinion than fact. It will be even more serious when these tests get accurate.
It is for example generally known that women have certain abilities that men either lack or are substantially less able than the women. Similarly men have abilities that accrue less to women. Various racial groups same... Temperment varies by race. Visual accuity varies by race. Family lines vary as well. Suppose you are prevented from work because of what family you came from?
Is a person to be prohibited access to work simply because it might wear them out faster than do other persons? Shall we only recruit from a specific family because of some behavior?
Argument can be made that selection against injury etc is a good thing. At the same time how finely do we allow the human race to be split up and catergorized realizing that all personal freedom goes with such? I personally think that such things should not be allowed at any level other than the most gross assessment.
No you don't need the weight of the shuttle. Most of that weight is wasted in the massive push to drive air out of the way on the way up and down. Next in your drive to be insulting and believe that I am a "Troll" which I am not, you had to start complaining about measurement systems. Quit that crap. They all work. A computer works for interchanging. If I talk in meters someone will want feet. You do the conversion if you feel like it.
Next you failed to note that the Shuttle was far from any 92,000 feet and had already burned over 80% of its fuel... There might be a bit more burning on the way, but TROLLS like you don't think of that. The honest numbers are that the fuel demand above 90,000 feet is LESS than 10% of that for a Sea Level Equitorial Launch. There have been proposals for launch ramps off of Pikes Peak because of this reality that Altitude gets the air out of the way.
Finally your TROLLSHIP I suggest you take a look at the fact that a ballon launch of 78,000 pounds was done from Redstone Airfield with very little tech other than an envelope and a lot of ropes to hang on to it in the early 1970's. That is the near equal to launching a shuttle payload within a factor of 2 and no great complexity change. All it took was a hot still day! I was there for the launch watching for several hours as they filled the balloon and then watched until it drifted far out of sight.
As you must know that a balloon launch eliminates about 99% of all of those "Launch window and failure situations." But as a Troll you obviously didn't consider the fact that a few very simple solid motors can hoist a massive load up into space after drifting upwards so. Bye bye to all the External Tank problems. Bye bye to just about all the problems for most launches. Besides if you are doing manned and want quick stuff the alternative is parasite launch and it works. This is what the X-15 proved, and B. Rutan (spelling noted) and a few others have found works. It is in fact why rockets are "Staged." Finally I am not paid to design and if I were I would have the basic concept worked out in a matter of a few months rather than the years you get from a NASA Search and Destroy mission against all new or decent means to go to the stars without hiring thousands of drone bureaucrats.
I have watched as NASA has taken a vivrant program and killed it like and Anaconda piling on coil after coil. Of course you can't see that it isn't a troll but rather someone who cares talking and you want to split hairs like arguing over feet vs meters.
Only the ignorant believe that the raids effect being so horrible that it prevented its further use. Every day we have men bent on killing others over their religion working hard to get a bomb so that they can USE IT. To deter the use of a weapon you presuppose that your opponent values his life more than he values your death. It also supposes that that your opponent is somewhat rational. The Russians and Americans wanted to live.
The Islamic nuts we are facing now want to die and publish that fact! They also are trying if not succeding in getting a bomb. If they get one, little doubt exists that they will use it promptly.
The ignorance of history in this affair shows in many posts as well. Had Japan the bomb and means to deliver it, their leaders admitted that they would have been far less merciful than the Americans. We ignore the fact that these men were killing for a religion just as the Islamic nuts are doing now.
A far better point is the fact that the USA Lowered the Sun on two towns of a people who worshipped the sun. It kind of gave the one finger salute to the persons who believed so. Another important point is that In Japan firebomb raids had done many times the damage and done nothing to break the will of Japan. A fair an studied estimate of the casualties of invading Japan by the USA was the death of tens of millions of Japanese and several million of USA. By simple reality, the atomic bombs did save millions of lives of Japan's people and more than justify the raid in this matter.
Gen. W.T. Sherman* (*US ARMY civil war era) noted that we may not be able to win the hearts and minds of these people but we can make war so horrible that their children and their children's children may not stomach war for 4 or 5 generations. Sorry but failing to understand this point begs one's understanding of history. Japan had to see that resistance was futile and thus could come a peace. Without it ending so decisively the war might well be still going on in some way or another. Ending war which is something we have not done well lately requires the loser to understand that his cause has lost. Nothing else will do. It isn't "God" or anything else. It is ending WAR.
A little memory on a space shuttle that blew up during the Reagan years... It blew up in the mid 40,000's of altitutude going something close to Mach 5 and... It had already burned up something close to 80% of its entire fuel inventory. At that point it didn't even have enough velocity to achieve orbit yet. Frankly it was short of the 92,000 feet where I proposed we light up engines after just floating up to the launch altitude. NASA could launch either Parasite or Balloon and achieve a much better profile and they know it!
Your assessment regards the change in status of checks is quite correct. You only made one error. You assumed that they still are this. As of the last 2 years of the Clinton Administration an "E Check" became as valid as a "Wet Check" and as such this property defacto already changed over 6 years ago. Gone! I am only proposing that a check be updated to its current legal status in fact.
This is in fact just a recognition of fact and law already existing. You can be sent to jail for a bad check someone who stole your identity wrote and cashed by a bank which couldn't give a rats rump about your security or identity. The same bank who advertizes on the tube for the ignorant masses that they will immediately return all false charges to your account....
This is the whole problem. People are making decisions and actions based upon what they believe rather than the facts of law. I am just reporting so get a life if you don't think its so.
It is US Government Policy to drive paper checks out of existence. They want to drive currency out as well! They no longer pay bills except by E transactions and they no longer accept that "Legal Tender" but only take it if deposited and "E" transferred. I have sat in the programmer discussions by the Government experts setting this up. They are doing this.
The fact that we taxpayers tolerate the bill for imprisoning people for long terms because we will not deal with reality and continue to allow our banks to steal our money is just plain foolishnes. Overdraft can be delt with by a credit function attached to a debit as is often the case already. With all do respect the previous post is absolutely a good one and quite astute. I apologize for having been about a mile ahead but I knew what was going on. Please don't take any of this to dispute or denegrate the previous post it was smart. The mods should give him some points.
Just a few facts the mods who need to get a life forgot and the posters against what I said forgot.
[1] Burt Ratan (forgive me giving him an extra "t" the nazis on the spelling etc around here are getting out of hand) did have to deal with "reentry problems" He dealt with it by a novel method of using the feather recovery methodology. It isn't that far from what NASA did years ago with Parachutes but it does handle a lot of heating issues. I also noted about the Russians and simple heat shields. WAKE UP I do know what I am talking about an mods and complainers are wrong here.
[2] The issue of balloon launch of 78 tons which was about equal to a segment of the Space Station to 92,000 feet from an airfield cannot be dismissed. Using standard boosting tech at that altitute, one can use 1/10th of the propellant to achieve exactly the same orbit. Its basic physics you idiots and it isn't F=ma or similar its wind resistance you idiots who think I don't know what I am talking about. Launches use about 90% of their energy to push air out of the way to get to orbit. Basic F=ma stuff would say that I could use two or 3 times the mass of the capsule to launch if there were no atmosphere. Wake up theres air around the earth!
Finally a note about Being a child of the space race. I know that alone is no qualification except as witness of events. I have been very much of a witness of a lot of things and in contact with a lot of things that some of you out there just have never seen. Yes I know a lot from this! A lot of events and situations you have never heard about. I was there! And YES I do know how arrogant and stupid the NASA leadership is and how awful they are. They are destroying the future of the Space Program. Judging from the Moderation I got, they must have plenty of support in their arrogance. I just hope the new dark ages that such thinking is bringing about are fun because so many of you seem to like them so much.
The Solution is already contained in the "Fair Debt Collection Practices Act of 1979." The only problem here is that it is only applied to credit. Being one who likes solutions here it comes!
The solution is to make the feduciary agent (bank) responsible for 100% of all false charges to the account with triplicate damages plus collection costs and legal fees if you have to collect. (This isn't funky law it already works) Application of this to DEBIT accounts would solve the problem to a very large extent.
The next part of the solution is to require all banks to provide you with 3 account numbers. One is for the actual account where you store your money. Another is an "Incoming Account" which you can publish to the world. Anyone like this friend could have a check deposited this way and no danger because the account is nothing but a key to put money in. The other is an "Out going" account where a person may place a limited amount of money for outgoing epay type or othe draws. This "Out Going" account could be closed and changed at will. That way one could lock out those skunks who try to autopay forever etc. This way one could protect their account.
A few other notes: We should end the "Overdraft" and bounced check laws. If a check does not have money, it should just be a refused transaction. Coupled with this the provision to immediately transfer funds... This way nobody goes to jail for bad checks, we just refuse them the goods because we can validate their check and charge the funds immediately.
Of course Banks would have a piss fit over these changes because no more overdraft fees etc. Well Tough Luck to them. Tell them to get a life and start earning their money serving their employers rather than screwing them. We would get fired if we treated our employer with such disrespect. This is only a proposal of good business practices. Nothing else. Skip the lectures about "Free Enterprise" because if a bank cannot make money under a good common set of laws they should go to hell. Mods this is good stuff, get a life if you don't like it!
There were proposals near the end of the Apollo program for BDB (Big Dumb Booster) to kick the stuff up into space for the people to work with who arrived seperately in their own capsule. Well the proposal got killed because it was too cheap and efficient. It quit hiring engineers and just got work done.
Being from the Redstone Arsenal Area where Marshall Space Flight Center is and having had my father help put men on the moon, I have delt and rubbed elbows with these guys for a long time. NASA was off on some regal royal hunt rather than doing the job right. The best evidence is B. Rattan and his X Prize effort. All he did was take the proved existing 1950's era tech and build it up with any modern available stuff. It works!
I have been to events where NASA leadership was present and private speakers were trying to get the space program advanced. I told them to listen because I learned the proposals and I knew they would work. I have been to events where the men were "begging for new ideas." They didn't want any because I gave them some.
I have seen launched from Redstone Airfield over 70,000 pounds to an altitude of over 90,000 feet using NO Fuel what so ever. I watched it! I told them to use the balloon launch like that to get the material above the atmosphere and then rockets above. They said it was "Impossible." The problem is that these guys don't have the calm casual thinking that if I take two days to get to orbit it beats taking 10 years development and a 10 minute launch. They are also attached to launch at a specific location and need yanked out of florida!
Recovery is another thing that these men are stinkers on. The Shuttle heat shield system is impossibly complex and completely unnecessary. Burt Rattan has proved that! The Russians proved it too! Russians recovered using Oak soaked in salt water heat shields for a long time! It worked! Even a retrofit disposable heat shield using (GASP!) Asbestos would work just fine! The current heat shield tiles are nothing but a second rate asbestos anyway. (Check the chemistry if you doubt this)
Being a child of the space race I know what these IDIOTS who get too much pay and who are to arrogant act like. I know their history very well. They need fired. But like very bureaucracy if you order mass firings of these idiots, only the working shlepps down at the bottom will get shed, not the morons at the top.
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Mod the parent of this post up! He deserves a 5. The trust us mentality of the government bureaucrats has cost the freedom of many and the lives of others. Distrust of the government is the right and moral obligation of every citizen, because it is all that keeps tyrrany in check. With Hurricane Katrina the bureaucrats wouldn't let the citizens boats in for rescue efforts and hundreds died awaiting a helicopter. The boats were turned back because the drivers were not "qualified" by FEMA. Should we trust this sort of behavior? Yes, we can trust it to kill us.
In the justice the issue of fact presented in court is the whole issue. You must be able to try the "witness". This is why "rape shield laws" really protect the criminal from prosecution. They prevent trying the witness and thus we must either take the claim on faith or forget it. The inability to try a witness in technical evidence is to give the state an assured conviction without a trial. One may as well install a vending machine for justice. With modern computers the taking of their output as evidence is and act of extreme faith. One must trust the input, trust the process and trust the custody of the whole system including documents which are virtual in the first place. Video evidence for example may appear totally intact, but with modern edit technology it can be a computer induced hallucination.
I want DUI's locked up! But I don't want officers running a vending machine for justice either. The more computer dependent these machines become, the more certain the tests they presume to do can be faked, altered or be just plain wrong and to test the programming becomes as important as asking the arresting officer questions. Educated Jurors must keep this stuff in mind.
The state pays officers and prosecutors to get convictions. They will unemploy one who loses often. There is a high incentive to fake and change evidence. The state has found it very cheap to hire very simple minded officers and load them with gadgets designed for the purpose of conviction. It makes money for the state and makes officials look like they are doing their job.
In England something like 800,000 traffic cameras exist. They got fabulous photos of terrorists doing their damage, but nothing could be done to stop them before hand. This because nobody was really watching. Cameras you see lack the ability to suspect (Probable Cause). The effect of these cameras has been an increase in crime and danger. This because the officers are no longer actually doing their job. We have to change this thinking that the machine is right. It exists to avoid being right.
I don't suppose that reminding the crowd that Archamedes had quite a history building some pretty massive things and doing so using some pretty cute tricks with some really high math is in order. I am quite sure that Archamedes was aware of the solar reflection and other issues. It is my understanding that he used bronze mirrors of very large size that were essentially slightly parabolic with a focal range about 1 mile. I do know he possessed the math, and architectural skills to do this. This is typical of ratio projection used in buildings.
I do know the results in history of this man's work are pretty well established. He pretty much set about and did whatever he intended to do. As a scientist he was neither politically correct nor foolish. He was the best of his time and frankly would have been pretty good today.
The Mythbusters assumed that some things were too big to do. This would not have been a problem for a man who engineered the roofing of big Greek buildings.
Remember this when you hear all the talk about cholestrol and the drugs to treat it.... (Just a hint)
I recently spent 3+ years in Hybred research. Here generally are the facts.
Hybreds fit well with two use conditions. (1)Extremely regular stop and go like some city commutes and like a route driver for UPS or similar. (2)Extremely regular high speed long duration driving. The rest of the conditions they sink fast. Essentially the problems arise because batteries are maxed at about 9% thermal efficiency. The hybrid functions well where the engine power curves may be maximized against what would otherwise be a questionable driving use of the energy. The high speed driving is because the engine is at a low power setting in that condition. It is better to turn it on and off and set the generation engine at high power settings. The route driver is advantaged because the engine may be turned off automatically and on by demand with the power set to the high setting at the peak of the power curve.
If I haven't confused you yet, batteries suck. That is an understatement. There are several media that are better than the batteries we use in such vehicles but they have yet to be applied. My best advice on the whole issue is that generally Hybreds are good test beds for other technology. In most uses they are impractical devices as now presented. It should be noted that most modern trains and mine vehicles are hybreds. These are in use the precise cases I noted above. (Route drivers and long distance runners) My advice would be to wait for the fuel reformer/fuel cell technology it has the best of all worlds. It fits all conditions, operates at the top of the efficiency curve in all use conditions, can be scaled and is durable. Best of all this oncoming tech is almost here.
I'll volunteer to settle this argument once and for all. Just look at the whole state of the Eastern USA because a hurricane took out the relatively rural areas in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas. The whole east is strangled for fuel. Their shops are in trouble for trade goods because the ports are in trouble. (I know someone who is going to cough up that New Orleans was involved -- relevant to this not)
Cities exist to sit asside trade routes and strangle the country production people if they dane to try to assume the profits they have worked to earn. Its called TAXES if you don't know what I am talking about.
Regards monorails etc...,. These were excellent ideas but the monorail was never extended to enough areas, so it suffered with intermodal problems. This is altogether the problem with most so called efficient systems of transport that are not personal cars. The advantage of a personal car is that it goes from A to B without any transshipment intermodal problems. Every other system is failing because of this fact. If a system were made that would pick up your car and transport it rapidly without a big dely in the transition then return it to the local network similarly such a system would have a real chance.
Frankly designers of "mass Transit" have a critical error. It is all individual transport. We need a system that picks up individuals and delivers them to their destination without delay or further interchange. Automated driving systems for cars solves this problem. [HINT HINT!]
There are numberous models for development of alternatives to the current system of fueling things. Some involve dramatic jumps in efficiency. Others involve recovery of system waste. Other models involve outside sourcing of the energy from "conventional sources" while still others involve unique technologies for using energy in the structure of matter and the universe. Probably improving efficiency is the front line for action at this time. All other methodologies probably take too long for immediate results.
A dramatic jump in thermal efficiency of heat engines associated with power generation in cars etc is really quite easy. Modern triple recovery turbines produce 65% thermal efficiency. Fuel Reformer/Fuel Cell technology has the same efficiency. This is compared to the approximately 18% from modern car engines. This is a case of changing engines. Fuel Reformer/Fuel Cell technology has the advantage here of being nearly infinitely throttleable. Its problem is the core cost of the factories to build it. (This needs a change in tax policy -- Read pass the Fair Tax. www.fairtax.org) Turbine technology applies better to hybrid or to extreme steady uses like long haul trucking. Both of these technologies have an advantage of being able to adapt to a wide range of fuel sources.
Sourcing outside of conventional sources is also quite easy. A Standard "Heat Pump" could be used to drive a sterling cycle engine and would have a COP over 3. There is a lot of discussion of magnetic devices that essentially do with solid state the same process. Cold fusion which is clearly a normal natural lightning process has great potential. I have witnessed 5 seconds of sustained entirely natural fusion from a lightning bolt. (REALLY SCARY STUFF -- a 30 foot diameter ball lightning popping and smapping off small balls etc) There is talk of many such devices in many areas. They all seem to work and all seem to tick off the physics community who tries to deny that they exist.
I know of several persons who have done very spectacular work in the field of energy improvements. These range from storage devices to actual development of new energy sources. Almost all of these have come to nothing in the face of a banking system wedded to the Oil Industry. Having run a small business myself and having left the industry because of bankers preventing the prospects of rational growth in order to protect other investments of theirs, I understand this completely. For those who think you can offer energy and profits and get a job, join the line behind those with better mouse traps. It just isn't so that a working invention equals success.
Out of kindness to some readers I will note that I owned a millwork business and apartments. I left the millwork business because even with perfect credit and large equity to assure payment, I could not get loans to be able to grow. The tax laws prevent equity funding. The bankers were protecting their friends from competition! In the Apartment business I for profit and paying all bills 100% on time found my credit cut off during the S&L disaster as they funded people who didn't pay and broke their institutions. Never say this stuff about "Free Enterprise" is real. The whole system is very much rigged and your money cannot buy it. The inventors of good new technology run into the fact that 80% or more of all investment in the world is in Energy Technology that will be obsolete if they accomplish their goal. Freeing Mankind by a benevolent energy methodology is absolutely against the value of these investments of our world financial institutions.
This isn't troll its just the facts. I spent 3 years recently researching Hybrid Vehicle technology. Frankly there is lots of working new stuff out there (generally no the hybrids). The problem is the financial people who stand to lose trillions of dollars to human success. Look at the USA right now (9/23/2005). The country is hobbled by two hurricanes hitting the oil infrastructure. Why hasn't new stuff been built and spread out so it cannot be volunerable? (This banking stuff!)
Well to really muck things up here takes some curiosity. Lets assume that the conclusions are correct and we proceed to rebuild New Orleans...?!!! If we assume that global warming is going to raise ocean levels or that it is just going to heat up the ocean, will New Orleans is going, going ..... Gone! Er.. Blub, blub blub
Of course none of this could be assumed to be from the fact that the Mississippi delta like most others in the world is sinking into the sea.
But even if this is wrong we could still be doing a lot of stupid stuff. For example: What happens to the earth when you suck out the oil and 100 times more brine. Does the earth sink? What happens to the tons of toxic heavy metals we bring up and pave our roads with. Just for kicks is it possible that we have more serious things to deal with?
And the oil industry will pump the support right out from under the city sinking the "Strongest City in all of America" beneath the waves. So unless its a submarine, don't buy there. New Orleans should be renamed New Atlantis.
The level of collapse that is occuring in many locations is pretty profound. In Alabama in the Coal Fields where they extract Natural Gas, Mountains have been lowered more than 20 feet in a single year. At Oak Hills in California the drop there over a long period of time is something close to 70 feet. In a Gas Field off of Russia (Pacific Ocean) they lowered the ocean bottom 25 feet and more in the field in just one year.
The answer is that the area is collapsing. Yes it is (for the oil fields). Of course some areas may be more able to take it than others.
Latest Data shows that the arc of Chandeleur Islands shielding New Orleans has sunk so that the storm completely removed them. They are nothing but shoals now.
The National Geographic spelled it out in Oct 2004! This disaster is about 1 part natural and about 9 parts man made suicide.
It begins with the city of New Orleans sinking into muck by natural processs of settling. It continues with the flood control stopping more muck from recovering this in the name of flood control. All of that might have been bad enough but then came the oil men. The Oil Industry removed from the region enough Oil, Natural Gas and Brine to sink the region at nearly a foot a year. No amount of levees and preparation can recover us from this damage. If we slake our thirst for energy the area will continue to sink.
For those who don't know, when you withdraw oil and gas, somtimes 100 times the amount of material withdrawn for use is withdrawn as brine or other stuff. Sometimes it is more. The Norphlet structure of southern Alabama, Mississippi, Most of Lousiana and part of Texas is actually sliding at about 1 foot a year into the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the Oil and Gas extraction. This is causing earthquakes and much more. Nearly 1/2 of the State of Lousiana is sinking into the Gulf for this reason. Sure the US Army Corps of Engineers flood control efforts are making this worse but the culprit is Oil/Gas operations. The loss of land here is due to the industrial activities here. I am sure somebody will disagree but they cannot change the facts here. I am not against Oil/Gas production. I just report what is going on.
The situation in New Orleans is definitely one of FEMA Incompetence to the point of Criminal Negligence. For example they have yet to place a call to the civilians to ask for small boats to handle the situation. This is our Dunkirk but nobody is calling for the boats. Make no mistake this is the Bureaucratic mentality at work here. Bureaucracy is probably the only force on the planet able to destroy the human race.
The FEMA and other government types have also neglected that as an echo of the situation the trucking of the South Eastern USA is shut down for lack of fuel. This is seriously hampering the recovery and threatens mass civil disruptions and possible mass starvation. The situation is most serious.
The disaster by Hurricane Katrina which left me without power for 3 days and now threatens my fuel supply indefinitely is for the most part a man made disaster. It is about 9 parts suicide and 1 part homicide. (Storm being the homicide) Please don't mistake me for having no sympathy with the hurt people. I care about them a lot.
Without going into many details, New Orleans put the kife in its gut over a century ago. It drove it deeper and deeper daily and ignored the consequences. It ranges from how the river was managed to the development of the Oil Industry which has pumped the city lower and lower every day.
The damage to America in general was the same. Our tax code told American Business to get rid of Inventory and to go to Just In Time(JIT) business models. Thus we lost any local stores of fuel and any national reserves. We lost our refinery capacity and we lost the reserves of spare parts for almost anything. JIT should be rephrased in an emergency to Just Immediate Termination. We have no reserves of medical supplies. We have no spare parts and we lack the basic supplies despite $3 Trillion in Homeland Security spending to do anything. Now the recovery is grinding to a halt for lack of fuel and the whole country is in danger of catastrophic economic collapse.
Storms will come and go but the INCOME TAX continues to grind America every day. It tells our industry to move out of the country and this disaster will accelerate the trend. The FAIR TAX will not do these evil deeds to us. It will allow fix for a profit because it allows profits.
I suppose answering at this late date with a few more details is probably not much value, but here goes.
Women as a general rule can identify some 3000 or more colors whereas men generally can identify if they are not color blind something like 100 or less. Of course there are men who can do as much as the woman but they are rare. (I am one who sees the colors but most men do not) Women as a general rule have just about 10 times the fineness of object recognition and they tolerate tedious jobs at nearly 10 times the rate men do. Sorry for the guys out there who think this is cultural, it isn't! This is biologic.
I know a sub post tries to argue some other issues. These are the reason the computer jobs involving hardware have for the most part gone to China and far east locations. The employers there can hire women and the tolerate the jobs that are extremely tedious and they see very fine detail. I learned this from men who were moving factories there. They had ones in the USA and they were not moving for wages contrary to the discussion. It was this feature of women and the fact that US Law forbid women only hiring.
In many cases the issue of intelligence differences is probably the best way to describe men vs women. Women are different than men. Their sensory perception and attention focus is as a group very different from men. Visual Acuity falls as a no contest for women. Attention to tedious jobs falls as a no contest for women. Mathematical and Logical Thinking falls to men each of these differences have pretty wide differences. These are well documented.
As to the racial differences these too are unbelievably well documented. There are wide racial differences in intelligence and behavior. These include temper and acuity in understanding of various subjects. Contrary to the test bias claims these can be verified by some pretty basic tests that are done at birth and measure only function. Being and RN I have been trained in such evaluations. If you will note, I am treading lightly here because I am not telling who is who. The data has been there for a very long time that there are big differences. These are not some esoteric minor inflections. They range from edge perception detection of motion being present in nearly all persons of some races to not appearing in persons of other races until about age 1. These range from temper differences of response being quite passive to outright violent to the same stimuli. Yes the Irish are more tempermental than the English. (Hense the "Fighting Irish") Race you see is not just black and white.
To be more specific, asians who are yellow or light brown skinned (generally because there are some exception races there) are the highest scoring on tests of visual acuity and moderate temper. They also score highest on mathematical skills. European whites range from this level in the north Germanic areas down to average in central europe and much below average in the balkins. (Hense the English word Moron, coming from people from the Albaina region -- Look up city names for fun folks) These of course are group averages. Black races have considerable ranges as well. I suppose I would be called a racist if I note their levels and so to prevent the Moderator Idiot curve from hitting me I will let readers guess here.
Have fun people, there is a wide and quite well known set of variances in people by race and by sex. But to print it is to suffer unscientific assault and to be wiped out in Political Correctness. Mods... Get a Life and quit calling Troll the facts.
I suppose the concept of military intelligence should be redefined as an oxymoron. Those who think otherwise should be assembled for the purchace of mountain land in florida and I have a fine bridge for them to buy in Brooklyn.
I once heard of a government lab where the Chinese, Russians and Indians tried every night to crack the lab security. So every night the lab simply disconnected the ethernet cable connecting them to the base network and thworted the attackes most successfully. You see the govenment bureaucrats in Russia, China and India went to work every day and tried to crack. Naturally being on the other side of the world the American lab wasn't open during their work day. Of course this security measure was not part of the US Base security plan. It was applied by some caring Americans. Of course this story couldn't be true could it?Of course it couldn't also be true that every computer on that American Base was to have the same top domain password so that the boss could look into all the computers for preserving base security. And it couldn't be true that such wide open security was required as a matter of policy. The same base couldn't have prohibited Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird while forcing the use of IE for "Security".
This of course is all delusional fiction well, maybe?
Corner Reflectors anyone?
This is the beginning of the export from control by the medical establishment of Pulse Oximetry. These devices have been for quite some time used in hospitals.
Now if we could get extracted from the clutches of the US-FDA the control over such devices expecially the optical devices used for Blood Sugar Monitoring which are made in the USA and cannot be sold here but are used world wide.... *Yes I am an RN*
I am in possession of a copy of Thomas Jefferson's work on redoing into modern (by the times) english of the bible. The US Constitution and etc were written by very strong christians. I know that this will not sit well with some but TJ was on of the guys the other side holds up as evidence of some of the non-christian forces and he wasn't. Get a life if you can't stand the facts.
The first ten amendments were pushed in the face of extreme efforts by the anti-religious (French Revolutionaries etc) to make sure that people were free.
I "love" the "evidence" police on /.(I lothe them frankly) Why can't they just shut up and allow a person to express an opinion. The opinion may or may not be based in fact and whats more the person might just know the facts but of course.... (Well enough on that)
The issue of a person being genetically tested and as such being descriminated against in hiring because they might tend to get a disease etc is a serious problem. It suffers from the problem that such science right now is more opinion than fact. It will be even more serious when these tests get accurate.
It is for example generally known that women have certain abilities that men either lack or are substantially less able than the women. Similarly men have abilities that accrue less to women. Various racial groups same... Temperment varies by race. Visual accuity varies by race. Family lines vary as well. Suppose you are prevented from work because of what family you came from?
Is a person to be prohibited access to work simply because it might wear them out faster than do other persons? Shall we only recruit from a specific family because of some behavior?
Argument can be made that selection against injury etc is a good thing. At the same time how finely do we allow the human race to be split up and catergorized realizing that all personal freedom goes with such? I personally think that such things should not be allowed at any level other than the most gross assessment.
No you don't need the weight of the shuttle. Most of that weight is wasted in the massive push to drive air out of the way on the way up and down. Next in your drive to be insulting and believe that I am a "Troll" which I am not, you had to start complaining about measurement systems. Quit that crap. They all work. A computer works for interchanging. If I talk in meters someone will want feet. You do the conversion if you feel like it.
Next you failed to note that the Shuttle was far from any 92,000 feet and had already burned over 80% of its fuel... There might be a bit more burning on the way, but TROLLS like you don't think of that. The honest numbers are that the fuel demand above 90,000 feet is LESS than 10% of that for a Sea Level Equitorial Launch. There have been proposals for launch ramps off of Pikes Peak because of this reality that Altitude gets the air out of the way.
Finally your TROLLSHIP I suggest you take a look at the fact that a ballon launch of 78,000 pounds was done from Redstone Airfield with very little tech other than an envelope and a lot of ropes to hang on to it in the early 1970's. That is the near equal to launching a shuttle payload within a factor of 2 and no great complexity change. All it took was a hot still day! I was there for the launch watching for several hours as they filled the balloon and then watched until it drifted far out of sight.
As you must know that a balloon launch eliminates about 99% of all of those "Launch window and failure situations." But as a Troll you obviously didn't consider the fact that a few very simple solid motors can hoist a massive load up into space after drifting upwards so. Bye bye to all the External Tank problems. Bye bye to just about all the problems for most launches. Besides if you are doing manned and want quick stuff the alternative is parasite launch and it works. This is what the X-15 proved, and B. Rutan (spelling noted) and a few others have found works. It is in fact why rockets are "Staged." Finally I am not paid to design and if I were I would have the basic concept worked out in a matter of a few months rather than the years you get from a NASA Search and Destroy mission against all new or decent means to go to the stars without hiring thousands of drone bureaucrats.
I have watched as NASA has taken a vivrant program and killed it like and Anaconda piling on coil after coil. Of course you can't see that it isn't a troll but rather someone who cares talking and you want to split hairs like arguing over feet vs meters.
Only the ignorant believe that the raids effect being so horrible that it prevented its further use. Every day we have men bent on killing others over their religion working hard to get a bomb so that they can USE IT. To deter the use of a weapon you presuppose that your opponent values his life more than he values your death. It also supposes that that your opponent is somewhat rational. The Russians and Americans wanted to live.
The Islamic nuts we are facing now want to die and publish that fact! They also are trying if not succeding in getting a bomb. If they get one, little doubt exists that they will use it promptly.
The ignorance of history in this affair shows in many posts as well. Had Japan the bomb and means to deliver it, their leaders admitted that they would have been far less merciful than the Americans. We ignore the fact that these men were killing for a religion just as the Islamic nuts are doing now.
A far better point is the fact that the USA Lowered the Sun on two towns of a people who worshipped the sun. It kind of gave the one finger salute to the persons who believed so. Another important point is that In Japan firebomb raids had done many times the damage and done nothing to break the will of Japan. A fair an studied estimate of the casualties of invading Japan by the USA was the death of tens of millions of Japanese and several million of USA. By simple reality, the atomic bombs did save millions of lives of Japan's people and more than justify the raid in this matter.
Gen. W.T. Sherman* (*US ARMY civil war era) noted that we may not be able to win the hearts and minds of these people but we can make war so horrible that their children and their children's children may not stomach war for 4 or 5 generations. Sorry but failing to understand this point begs one's understanding of history. Japan had to see that resistance was futile and thus could come a peace. Without it ending so decisively the war might well be still going on in some way or another. Ending war which is something we have not done well lately requires the loser to understand that his cause has lost. Nothing else will do. It isn't "God" or anything else. It is ending WAR.
A little memory on a space shuttle that blew up during the Reagan years... It blew up in the mid 40,000's of altitutude going something close to Mach 5 and... It had already burned up something close to 80% of its entire fuel inventory. At that point it didn't even have enough velocity to achieve orbit yet. Frankly it was short of the 92,000 feet where I proposed we light up engines after just floating up to the launch altitude. NASA could launch either Parasite or Balloon and achieve a much better profile and they know it!
Nope not a troll you are!
Your assessment regards the change in status of checks is quite correct. You only made one error. You assumed that they still are this. As of the last 2 years of the Clinton Administration an "E Check" became as valid as a "Wet Check" and as such this property defacto already changed over 6 years ago. Gone! I am only proposing that a check be updated to its current legal status in fact.
This is in fact just a recognition of fact and law already existing. You can be sent to jail for a bad check someone who stole your identity wrote and cashed by a bank which couldn't give a rats rump about your security or identity. The same bank who advertizes on the tube for the ignorant masses that they will immediately return all false charges to your account....
This is the whole problem. People are making decisions and actions based upon what they believe rather than the facts of law. I am just reporting so get a life if you don't think its so.
It is US Government Policy to drive paper checks out of existence. They want to drive currency out as well! They no longer pay bills except by E transactions and they no longer accept that "Legal Tender" but only take it if deposited and "E" transferred. I have sat in the programmer discussions by the Government experts setting this up. They are doing this.
The fact that we taxpayers tolerate the bill for imprisoning people for long terms because we will not deal with reality and continue to allow our banks to steal our money is just plain foolishnes. Overdraft can be delt with by a credit function attached to a debit as is often the case already. With all do respect the previous post is absolutely a good one and quite astute. I apologize for having been about a mile ahead but I knew what was going on. Please don't take any of this to dispute or denegrate the previous post it was smart. The mods should give him some points.
Just a few facts the mods who need to get a life forgot and the posters against what I said forgot.
[1] Burt Ratan (forgive me giving him an extra "t" the nazis on the spelling etc around here are getting out of hand) did have to deal with "reentry problems" He dealt with it by a novel method of using the feather recovery methodology. It isn't that far from what NASA did years ago with Parachutes but it does handle a lot of heating issues. I also noted about the Russians and simple heat shields. WAKE UP I do know what I am talking about an mods and complainers are wrong here.
[2] The issue of balloon launch of 78 tons which was about equal to a segment of the Space Station to 92,000 feet from an airfield cannot be dismissed. Using standard boosting tech at that altitute, one can use 1/10th of the propellant to achieve exactly the same orbit. Its basic physics you idiots and it isn't F=ma or similar its wind resistance you idiots who think I don't know what I am talking about. Launches use about 90% of their energy to push air out of the way to get to orbit. Basic F=ma stuff would say that I could use two or 3 times the mass of the capsule to launch if there were no atmosphere. Wake up theres air around the earth!
Finally a note about Being a child of the space race. I know that alone is no qualification except as witness of events. I have been very much of a witness of a lot of things and in contact with a lot of things that some of you out there just have never seen. Yes I know a lot from this! A lot of events and situations you have never heard about. I was there! And YES I do know how arrogant and stupid the NASA leadership is and how awful they are. They are destroying the future of the Space Program. Judging from the Moderation I got, they must have plenty of support in their arrogance. I just hope the new dark ages that such thinking is bringing about are fun because so many of you seem to like them so much.
The Solution is already contained in the "Fair Debt Collection Practices Act of 1979." The only problem here is that it is only applied to credit. Being one who likes solutions here it comes!
The solution is to make the feduciary agent (bank) responsible for 100% of all false charges to the account with triplicate damages plus collection costs and legal fees if you have to collect. (This isn't funky law it already works) Application of this to DEBIT accounts would solve the problem to a very large extent.
The next part of the solution is to require all banks to provide you with 3 account numbers. One is for the actual account where you store your money. Another is an "Incoming Account" which you can publish to the world. Anyone like this friend could have a check deposited this way and no danger because the account is nothing but a key to put money in. The other is an "Out going" account where a person may place a limited amount of money for outgoing epay type or othe draws. This "Out Going" account could be closed and changed at will. That way one could lock out those skunks who try to autopay forever etc. This way one could protect their account.
A few other notes: We should end the "Overdraft" and bounced check laws. If a check does not have money, it should just be a refused transaction. Coupled with this the provision to immediately transfer funds... This way nobody goes to jail for bad checks, we just refuse them the goods because we can validate their check and charge the funds immediately.
Of course Banks would have a piss fit over these changes because no more overdraft fees etc. Well Tough Luck to them. Tell them to get a life and start earning their money serving their employers rather than screwing them. We would get fired if we treated our employer with such disrespect. This is only a proposal of good business practices. Nothing else. Skip the lectures about "Free Enterprise" because if a bank cannot make money under a good common set of laws they should go to hell. Mods this is good stuff, get a life if you don't like it!
There were proposals near the end of the Apollo program for BDB (Big Dumb Booster) to kick the stuff up into space for the people to work with who arrived seperately in their own capsule. Well the proposal got killed because it was too cheap and efficient. It quit hiring engineers and just got work done.
Being from the Redstone Arsenal Area where Marshall Space Flight Center is and having had my father help put men on the moon, I have delt and rubbed elbows with these guys for a long time. NASA was off on some regal royal hunt rather than doing the job right. The best evidence is B. Rattan and his X Prize effort. All he did was take the proved existing 1950's era tech and build it up with any modern available stuff. It works!
I have been to events where NASA leadership was present and private speakers were trying to get the space program advanced. I told them to listen because I learned the proposals and I knew they would work. I have been to events where the men were "begging for new ideas." They didn't want any because I gave them some.
I have seen launched from Redstone Airfield over 70,000 pounds to an altitude of over 90,000 feet using NO Fuel what so ever. I watched it! I told them to use the balloon launch like that to get the material above the atmosphere and then rockets above. They said it was "Impossible." The problem is that these guys don't have the calm casual thinking that if I take two days to get to orbit it beats taking 10 years development and a 10 minute launch. They are also attached to launch at a specific location and need yanked out of florida!
Recovery is another thing that these men are stinkers on. The Shuttle heat shield system is impossibly complex and completely unnecessary. Burt Rattan has proved that! The Russians proved it too! Russians recovered using Oak soaked in salt water heat shields for a long time! It worked! Even a retrofit disposable heat shield using (GASP!) Asbestos would work just fine! The current heat shield tiles are nothing but a second rate asbestos anyway. (Check the chemistry if you doubt this)
Being a child of the space race I know what these IDIOTS who get too much pay and who are to arrogant act like. I know their history very well. They need fired. But like very bureaucracy if you order mass firings of these idiots, only the working shlepps down at the bottom will get shed, not the morons at the top.