It's about five billion people. My point was that it wouldn't be practical to try to get everything on everyone alive. It wouldn't even be practical to get everything on every US citizen, every foreign national living legally or illegally in the US, and every foreign national to visit the US. But, if they attempted to build such a system, it would be worth our while to break it.
I'm VERY against the idea of Carivore. If they want to wiretap someone on my ISP, they need to get a court order to "wiretap" that individual exclusively, without touching me. They should not be allowed to collect so much as stray pings unless they're communication with the target of the electronic tapping. If they aren't accusing me of a specific crime, they should leave me alone.
The only thing that I'll give the MPAA over the RIAA is that they have understood the market for their products significantly better, and priced accordingly. I don't like CSS encoding, I don't like region encoding, but I am much more willing to but a DVD for $10 or less from the bargain bin than a $16 CD of music that has been on the market for 20 years. I was very upset with the prosecution of Jon Johansen, who was a minor when he engaged in the actions that brought initial charges, and even more outraged when they APPEALED his acquittal, as allowed by Norweigan law.
It's along the lines of what a friend of mine said. He won't buy gas from Exxon over the Valdez incident, but Exxon's prices are too high anyway. If they were cheaper, he'd probably be in line there instead of at Quick Trip or Arco or whatnot. I think that the MPAA is full of scoundrels, especially the likes of Jack Valenti, whose own testimony before congress and the courts is contradictory, yet if they'll give me 'what I want', or close enough, they'll get my business. The RIAA is outside of the "what I want' category.
"Personally, I'm proud to be able to say that the last CD I purchased was in 1988. 45's I liked... got the song I wanted for a reasonable price. The cost/benefit ratio of compact discs, as they have always been marketed, is very poor. People accepted that because there was no alternative (ah, the wonders of monopolism) and the RIAA pronouced it good."
That's what's really funny in my opinion. The 3" CD standard exists to provide a sort of throwback to the 45, a small, low capacity medium to record on to that can be used to sell singles. I think that the very few CD singles that I've seen, all on 4.5" CDs, is silly. Of course, since the music industry doesn't want you to buy one song from them for $2.00, they want you to buy two songs that you really want and nine that you dislike for $16.99, I understand why they aren't using the format, but one would think that if they released $2.00 CD singles on the small sized CDs that people might actually buy them, rather than spend $70/month for high speed internet with the sole idea of music exchange...
They won't provide legal representation. Duh. Why would they?
I'm just wondering why they're caving constantly to the RIAA. It would be one thing if the way the RIAA worked with the legal system required the RIAA to do a little more work to prove their case before they could file subpoenas, but with the way they are allowed to send subpoenas (without initially warning with cease-and-desists) is stupid.
A club that I am a member of (25 person science fiction club) had a logo that had been designed before I joined. the problem is that the guy who designed it, who had left the club, was too similar to another logo that was copyrighted and trademarked. So, the organization who owned the original image sent us a polite letter asking us to please use up any consumables with the logo and change the logo. They didn't even get so formal as to do a cease-and-desist, a secretary from that organization sent us the letter. We politely complied.
Personally, if I was sharing data illegally and received a letter from the RIAA asking me to stop it, after some rather unpleasant bodily functions I would bring myself into compliance. Immediately. I suspsect that anyone else doing this would do the same, at least in the short-term. And if the RIAA knew who I was enough to be able to tell me to cut it out, I'd be damn sure that I kept out of trouble there on out.
By sending out legal subpoenas and filing for financial damages, they've ensured that they get no sympathy from anyone who has ever used an mp3 codec. I'd be a helluva lot more sympathetic if they were more polite initially, with letters first, cease-and-desists second, and court filings third, than my feelings right now, which are summarized as "fuck 'em".
Back to the inital point though, with colleges frequently bending to give the RIAA what they want, if the RIAA would ask the universities to deal with the filesharers who have been detected with X information on Y ip address, the colleges would probably handle it internally, the courts wouldn't have to get involved, and the offenders would stop. Much more neat and tidy.
Something to remember about systems is that they have limitations. Something can only store or process so much information at any given point. If people determine the functional bounds of the system, they know how to break it or render it less useful.
Case in point: the idea of a national database on everyone alive
If one, hypothetically, saw the creation of a national database on people, it wouldn't be hard to 'fake' information on a decent scale that is patently false information. It would require some creativity, but it could probably be done in a way that isn't even illegal. It's called fiction. Create stories with names in them, create stories with numbers in them. Make up numbers. We all know that social security numbers are XXX-XX-XXXX format, so it wouldn't be hard to say that "Ol' Jim Houston" has 234-11-5532 for a social security number. So, the national database spidering software might pick up that number and note that the true owner of that number has an alias of "Ol' Jim Houston". Write a story about this character where he uses his 'number', so it comes up. Movies do it all of the time, if you've ever seen "FX", they used SSNs in determining information about bad guys.
Create "likes" pages. Say someone likes guns, or rabbits, or construction, or water parks, or anything. Email it around. If there's something out there that we don't like, it'll collect the information. Email "bad" words around without context, in such a way that they trip Carnivore or similar systems but do such in a way to make it obvious that they're complete and utter bullshit.
Make the system have so much information to process, categorize, and store that it either has to ignore information entirely or that it fails in the middle of doing its job. Or, make it so that if it manages to process everything that it gets that it stores so much bad information that the 'record' for any given individual is useless. I'd love to see it store that I go dowhill skiing every Northern Hemisphere summer down in Australia, or that I frequent BDSM clubs, or that I helped design the rocket car "The Spirit of America", just so that there is no credibility to any of the information at all in the system, since nothing can be easily verified as being correct. This breaks the system at a use level.
If a million geeks decide to do this, the ability for any given system to work is very low. I'm sure that people will complain that we're endangering national security, but remember, terrorists that we've seen, Timothy McVeigh, the DC area snipers, the Abortion Clinic bombers, and the WTC/Pentagon attackers, didn't do what they did in a way that was detectable through the methods that they want to start using. They did it with a rental truck and farming fertilizer, or boxcutters, or a rifle and a sheetmetal-modified car. Does any of this revolve around computers? ANY of it?
"...it would be pretty hard to prove it wasn't there."
and that's the problem with the DMCA and other laws like this. With a complex situation or structure you can't prove a negative. This is one of the fundamentals of science, in terms of hyoptheses becoming theories. If there is no way to test a hypothesis in such a way as to get a confirmed pass/fail test, then it's not a very good theory.
As for the 'encoding', read "Radio Free Ablemuth" by Philip K. Dick. It specifically addressed this kind of freakishness with coded messages. Or go see "A Beautiful Mind". Another example of why it's not feasible to go around accusing someone who can't prove a negative result. I feel that it should be criminal to accuse someone without having a verifiable positive first showing that they've actually done something wrong. Yeah, this puts the burden of proof on the accuser. Isn't that what the constitution says, with "Innocent until proven guilty"?
Not to give the media conglomerates any more work or anything...
... for location tracking always include the ability to have someone else get ahold of this information. This is why I don't have a cell phone. In theory, they could track what cell tower I was connected to anyway, and get a rough idea of my location. Granted, a normal POTS line has a definite endpoint, but it's not one that is carried around.
I can see benefits to this technology, since 911 operators will have an easier time dispatching emergency personnel, and it might even be useful for delivery drivers to know if the destination is legitimate. Other than that, though, I see so much possible abuse that I don't want to see this technology in use.
I would be cool with a cell phone having a GPS receiver built in, so I could find out where I am and tell the caller, but they should not be able to gain that information without my approval.
It would start out at the beginning with the conclusion and subsequent sealing of records from Novell's days of UNIX and their court case. We could then move on, with the slow beginning to the conversion of Caldera Inc into SCOX, and discuss the posturing between SCO and IBM, moving on to SCO's lawsuit against IBM, SCO's unenforceable "deadline", their personal attacks against the likes of Linus Torvalds, discussions on their failure to provide code examples repeatedly, and the like. We can then get into their license extortion, the additional lawsuits, the countersuits, and the like.
I'd offer to do it, but I don't have powerful enough software to create such a map, according to SCO's claims on my OS...
"So, when's the last time you actually met a candidate for a major office, and actually had a discussion with him over issues?"
Actually, I did work for one of the current mayor's businesses before he was elected. I met the man several times. I didn't vote for him. I also did work for his campaign manager, and until I did actually meet the candidate I was thinking about voting for him.
Spin doctoring is very effective against most people. It's easy to make an image (in this limited case) or break one (as happened in the 1996 Presidental race with Bob Dole) because of bad campaigning advice. Dole didn't speak in the third person normally. It was advice from his campaign manager. Bad advice, for it made him look like he was detached from his ideas, somewhat senile, and a poor public speaker. Clinton was able to be the opposite, looking informed and alert.
Apparently you're not familiar with what a "Telection" was on Max Headroom, either. In Max Headroom, it was illegal to turn off your TV. Voting was based on what channel the candidate was affiliated with, so when it was election time you were to tune in to the network that your preferred candidate was using.
you need to build it. They're not interested in building it open source apparently. Remember, Diebold makes ATM machines and other commercial products, and they have stiff competition. By the design of their business plan their software won't be open.
So, if you want to see an open source implementation of voting software, something that you can argue is perfect and be able to show the world such, you need to make it. Diebold and their competitors won't.
If you can build the software to make a secure voting system, someone else can design the hardware once the software is ready. That seems to be what people are missing here. Design the system right and the hardware will be built to work. Design the hardware first, and the system will be dependent on whatever wacky design is chosen.
My PC has all of those things too, and is in a nice 19" rackmount chassis in the AV rack along with the CD Player, Laserdisc Player, VCR, Tape Deck, Receiver, Pro Logic Decoder, etc, etc, etc.
Granted, it doesn't operate perfectly mainly on account of my not really knowing what I'm doing, but the form factor of this thing is just asinine. A nice 3U height case would be perfect, 17" wide (with an available 19" ears kit), black to match my AV stuff, with front Svideo and Component inputs like VCRs. This thing by comparison won't fit in a telco rack properly.
"...The inventions of the future include a robot that could attend conferences in your behalf and allow you to communicate via video and audio applications..."
Didn't they have prior art on this in "Real Genius" with the taperecording of the taperecorded lecturer?
Besides, why would you send a physical robot to a physical meeting when you can use software to emulate a meeting? This approach reminds me of the way technology was implemented in "Brazil".
Yes, I do have too many movies. 169 laserdiscs and counting...
Say I live in a fairly high-density city, in an apartment or condominium. I have a stove that is broken and old and not worth servicing to make functional again. It's dirty as hell, and just plain gross. Let's also so say that I don't own a truck. How am I supposed to recycle it? No one is going to come pick it up and still give me money for it, and even if someone is willing to pick it up for free to me, I still have to schedule and wait. However, there is the big trash can in the complex that is emptied three times a week, and I can get a couple of friends to help me heave it into the trashcan, and it'll be hauled off with all of the other garbage. Or, I can leave it sitting next to the trash can for it to be someone elses' problem.
A large amount of consumer waste isn't metal, it's plastic, ceramic, glass, or silicon. Metal things generally last longer. The big things that are metal are the problems. Recycling needs to be made more practical for them to be handled right.
How difficult would it be for us to use some other craft to boost the hubble into a higher orbit? it's not as if it's any secret what coupling mechanism it has, it should be easy (relatively speaking) to have something unmanned do it.
In terms of maintenance of the Hubble, why don't they consider a structure that allows them to completely envelop and grapple to the telescope, so that they can work without nearly as serious a risk of losing parts while it's disassembled? Whatever they would employ wouldn't have to enclose an atmosphere, but it would provide a room-like feel for astronauts, rather than the current unsurrounded feel. If they drifted away, they would make contact with a wall, and then rebound. Parts that drift would be easily found.
If they felt really adventurous, they could build a module that would be self-contained with an atmosphere that the Hubble could be brought into for service, complete with a personnel airlock, and when not in use be placed into a convenient orbit or else brought down in pieces for later use...
One advantage of having your workers in your office, despite labour costs, is that you can throttle them when they screw up, and the laws that cover labor are known to you directly. Any additional contractual law is also easier to enforce. Also, you can physically chew them out if they keep screwing up, so you have more direct management control.
If they work from home, you don't have nearly the same control as if you walked over to their cubicle to yell, and they're as expensive as they would be in India, to boot. So, you gain nothing by doing this.
If the voting was so incredibly biased, as 400-21 shows, and if the Senate has similarly significant differences with their vote, it would be foolish to veto this. The population is against the media consolidation, and our representatives seem to actually get it, so I hope that the President isn't going to be dumb and try to stop it. He's already unpopular enough...
"I just hope they'll be able to stand up better in court than Verizon did."
They have a little more legal sway in terms of sympathetic eyes than Verizon had. They're both extremely reputable institutions, with graduates all over the professional world. Also, since MIT is geek-central, they have a different, probably more personal stake in the situation. They also have legislation regarding student privacy. Many colleges won't give out any information unless it's a "did this person graduate?" kind of resume-related query. So, they have some very legitimate, older laws to fall back on to justify their positions.
"Why must Hollywood send me conflicting messages?"
you need to see Amazon Women on the Moon if you want to see really conflicting. Some "pirates" seize the MCA/Universal ship and steal the movies and video discs. It's an absolutely hilarious segment...
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It's about five billion people. My point was that it wouldn't be practical to try to get everything on everyone alive. It wouldn't even be practical to get everything on every US citizen, every foreign national living legally or illegally in the US, and every foreign national to visit the US. But, if they attempted to build such a system, it would be worth our while to break it.
I'm VERY against the idea of Carivore. If they want to wiretap someone on my ISP, they need to get a court order to "wiretap" that individual exclusively, without touching me. They should not be allowed to collect so much as stray pings unless they're communication with the target of the electronic tapping. If they aren't accusing me of a specific crime, they should leave me alone.
The only thing that I'll give the MPAA over the RIAA is that they have understood the market for their products significantly better, and priced accordingly. I don't like CSS encoding, I don't like region encoding, but I am much more willing to but a DVD for $10 or less from the bargain bin than a $16 CD of music that has been on the market for 20 years. I was very upset with the prosecution of Jon Johansen, who was a minor when he engaged in the actions that brought initial charges, and even more outraged when they APPEALED his acquittal, as allowed by Norweigan law.
It's along the lines of what a friend of mine said. He won't buy gas from Exxon over the Valdez incident, but Exxon's prices are too high anyway. If they were cheaper, he'd probably be in line there instead of at Quick Trip or Arco or whatnot. I think that the MPAA is full of scoundrels, especially the likes of Jack Valenti, whose own testimony before congress and the courts is contradictory, yet if they'll give me 'what I want', or close enough, they'll get my business. The RIAA is outside of the "what I want' category.
"Personally, I'm proud to be able to say that the last CD I purchased was in 1988. 45's I liked ... got the song I wanted for a reasonable price. The cost/benefit ratio of compact discs, as they have always been marketed, is very poor. People accepted that because there was no alternative (ah, the wonders of monopolism) and the RIAA pronouced it good."
That's what's really funny in my opinion. The 3" CD standard exists to provide a sort of throwback to the 45, a small, low capacity medium to record on to that can be used to sell singles. I think that the very few CD singles that I've seen, all on 4.5" CDs, is silly. Of course, since the music industry doesn't want you to buy one song from them for $2.00, they want you to buy two songs that you really want and nine that you dislike for $16.99, I understand why they aren't using the format, but one would think that if they released $2.00 CD singles on the small sized CDs that people might actually buy them, rather than spend $70/month for high speed internet with the sole idea of music exchange...
They won't provide legal representation. Duh. Why would they?
I'm just wondering why they're caving constantly to the RIAA. It would be one thing if the way the RIAA worked with the legal system required the RIAA to do a little more work to prove their case before they could file subpoenas, but with the way they are allowed to send subpoenas (without initially warning with cease-and-desists) is stupid.
A club that I am a member of (25 person science fiction club) had a logo that had been designed before I joined. the problem is that the guy who designed it, who had left the club, was too similar to another logo that was copyrighted and trademarked. So, the organization who owned the original image sent us a polite letter asking us to please use up any consumables with the logo and change the logo. They didn't even get so formal as to do a cease-and-desist, a secretary from that organization sent us the letter. We politely complied.
Personally, if I was sharing data illegally and received a letter from the RIAA asking me to stop it, after some rather unpleasant bodily functions I would bring myself into compliance. Immediately. I suspsect that anyone else doing this would do the same, at least in the short-term. And if the RIAA knew who I was enough to be able to tell me to cut it out, I'd be damn sure that I kept out of trouble there on out.
By sending out legal subpoenas and filing for financial damages, they've ensured that they get no sympathy from anyone who has ever used an mp3 codec. I'd be a helluva lot more sympathetic if they were more polite initially, with letters first, cease-and-desists second, and court filings third, than my feelings right now, which are summarized as "fuck 'em".
Back to the inital point though, with colleges frequently bending to give the RIAA what they want, if the RIAA would ask the universities to deal with the filesharers who have been detected with X information on Y ip address, the colleges would probably handle it internally, the courts wouldn't have to get involved, and the offenders would stop. Much more neat and tidy.
Something to remember about systems is that they have limitations. Something can only store or process so much information at any given point. If people determine the functional bounds of the system, they know how to break it or render it less useful.
Case in point: the idea of a national database on everyone alive
If one, hypothetically, saw the creation of a national database on people, it wouldn't be hard to 'fake' information on a decent scale that is patently false information. It would require some creativity, but it could probably be done in a way that isn't even illegal. It's called fiction. Create stories with names in them, create stories with numbers in them. Make up numbers. We all know that social security numbers are XXX-XX-XXXX format, so it wouldn't be hard to say that "Ol' Jim Houston" has 234-11-5532 for a social security number. So, the national database spidering software might pick up that number and note that the true owner of that number has an alias of "Ol' Jim Houston". Write a story about this character where he uses his 'number', so it comes up. Movies do it all of the time, if you've ever seen "FX", they used SSNs in determining information about bad guys. Create "likes" pages. Say someone likes guns, or rabbits, or construction, or water parks, or anything. Email it around. If there's something out there that we don't like, it'll collect the information. Email "bad" words around without context, in such a way that they trip Carnivore or similar systems but do such in a way to make it obvious that they're complete and utter bullshit.
Make the system have so much information to process, categorize, and store that it either has to ignore information entirely or that it fails in the middle of doing its job. Or, make it so that if it manages to process everything that it gets that it stores so much bad information that the 'record' for any given individual is useless. I'd love to see it store that I go dowhill skiing every Northern Hemisphere summer down in Australia, or that I frequent BDSM clubs, or that I helped design the rocket car "The Spirit of America", just so that there is no credibility to any of the information at all in the system, since nothing can be easily verified as being correct. This breaks the system at a use level.
If a million geeks decide to do this, the ability for any given system to work is very low. I'm sure that people will complain that we're endangering national security, but remember, terrorists that we've seen, Timothy McVeigh, the DC area snipers, the Abortion Clinic bombers, and the WTC/Pentagon attackers, didn't do what they did in a way that was detectable through the methods that they want to start using. They did it with a rental truck and farming fertilizer, or boxcutters, or a rifle and a sheetmetal-modified car. Does any of this revolve around computers? ANY of it?
"...it would be pretty hard to prove it wasn't there."
and that's the problem with the DMCA and other laws like this. With a complex situation or structure you can't prove a negative. This is one of the fundamentals of science, in terms of hyoptheses becoming theories. If there is no way to test a hypothesis in such a way as to get a confirmed pass/fail test, then it's not a very good theory.
As for the 'encoding', read "Radio Free Ablemuth" by Philip K. Dick. It specifically addressed this kind of freakishness with coded messages. Or go see "A Beautiful Mind". Another example of why it's not feasible to go around accusing someone who can't prove a negative result. I feel that it should be criminal to accuse someone without having a verifiable positive first showing that they've actually done something wrong. Yeah, this puts the burden of proof on the accuser. Isn't that what the constitution says, with "Innocent until proven guilty"?
Not to give the media conglomerates any more work or anything...
I was hoping for 'Intelligent Mail Handlers' first...
... for location tracking always include the ability to have someone else get ahold of this information. This is why I don't have a cell phone. In theory, they could track what cell tower I was connected to anyway, and get a rough idea of my location. Granted, a normal POTS line has a definite endpoint, but it's not one that is carried around.
I can see benefits to this technology, since 911 operators will have an easier time dispatching emergency personnel, and it might even be useful for delivery drivers to know if the destination is legitimate. Other than that, though, I see so much possible abuse that I don't want to see this technology in use.
I would be cool with a cell phone having a GPS receiver built in, so I could find out where I am and tell the caller, but they should not be able to gain that information without my approval.
Remembering that really awesome UNIX history map that Eric Levenez has, we could do a new map, the SCO Lawsuit Map.
It would start out at the beginning with the conclusion and subsequent sealing of records from Novell's days of UNIX and their court case. We could then move on, with the slow beginning to the conversion of Caldera Inc into SCOX, and discuss the posturing between SCO and IBM, moving on to SCO's lawsuit against IBM, SCO's unenforceable "deadline", their personal attacks against the likes of Linus Torvalds, discussions on their failure to provide code examples repeatedly, and the like. We can then get into their license extortion, the additional lawsuits, the countersuits, and the like.
I'd offer to do it, but I don't have powerful enough software to create such a map, according to SCO's claims on my OS...
"So, when's the last time you actually met a candidate for a major office, and actually had a discussion with him over issues?"
Actually, I did work for one of the current mayor's businesses before he was elected. I met the man several times. I didn't vote for him. I also did work for his campaign manager, and until I did actually meet the candidate I was thinking about voting for him.
Spin doctoring is very effective against most people. It's easy to make an image (in this limited case) or break one (as happened in the 1996 Presidental race with Bob Dole) because of bad campaigning advice. Dole didn't speak in the third person normally. It was advice from his campaign manager. Bad advice, for it made him look like he was detached from his ideas, somewhat senile, and a poor public speaker. Clinton was able to be the opposite, looking informed and alert.
Apparently you're not familiar with what a "Telection" was on Max Headroom, either. In Max Headroom, it was illegal to turn off your TV. Voting was based on what channel the candidate was affiliated with, so when it was election time you were to tune in to the network that your preferred candidate was using.
"If electronic voting becomes the norm (likely), I just won't vote."
The odds are already heavily against your voting currently anyway, so I don't see how this will matter much.
At least we don't use the "Telelection" methodology a'la Max Headroom...
you need to build it. They're not interested in building it open source apparently. Remember, Diebold makes ATM machines and other commercial products, and they have stiff competition. By the design of their business plan their software won't be open.
So, if you want to see an open source implementation of voting software, something that you can argue is perfect and be able to show the world such, you need to make it. Diebold and their competitors won't.
If you can build the software to make a secure voting system, someone else can design the hardware once the software is ready. That seems to be what people are missing here. Design the system right and the hardware will be built to work. Design the hardware first, and the system will be dependent on whatever wacky design is chosen.
My PC has all of those things too, and is in a nice 19" rackmount chassis in the AV rack along with the CD Player, Laserdisc Player, VCR, Tape Deck, Receiver, Pro Logic Decoder, etc, etc, etc.
Granted, it doesn't operate perfectly mainly on account of my not really knowing what I'm doing, but the form factor of this thing is just asinine. A nice 3U height case would be perfect, 17" wide (with an available 19" ears kit), black to match my AV stuff, with front Svideo and Component inputs like VCRs. This thing by comparison won't fit in a telco rack properly.
"and you have the gaul to sit here and complain about technological anachronisms in the movie Brazil. Dude..."
Hey! That technology came out the same year as my car was made! My Chrysler Cordoba rocks your world!
"...The inventions of the future include a robot that could attend conferences in your behalf and allow you to communicate via video and audio applications..."
Didn't they have prior art on this in "Real Genius" with the taperecording of the taperecorded lecturer?
Besides, why would you send a physical robot to a physical meeting when you can use software to emulate a meeting? This approach reminds me of the way technology was implemented in "Brazil".
Yes, I do have too many movies. 169 laserdiscs and counting...
Say I live in a fairly high-density city, in an apartment or condominium. I have a stove that is broken and old and not worth servicing to make functional again. It's dirty as hell, and just plain gross. Let's also so say that I don't own a truck. How am I supposed to recycle it? No one is going to come pick it up and still give me money for it, and even if someone is willing to pick it up for free to me, I still have to schedule and wait. However, there is the big trash can in the complex that is emptied three times a week, and I can get a couple of friends to help me heave it into the trashcan, and it'll be hauled off with all of the other garbage. Or, I can leave it sitting next to the trash can for it to be someone elses' problem.
A large amount of consumer waste isn't metal, it's plastic, ceramic, glass, or silicon. Metal things generally last longer. The big things that are metal are the problems. Recycling needs to be made more practical for them to be handled right.
How difficult would it be for us to use some other craft to boost the hubble into a higher orbit? it's not as if it's any secret what coupling mechanism it has, it should be easy (relatively speaking) to have something unmanned do it.
In terms of maintenance of the Hubble, why don't they consider a structure that allows them to completely envelop and grapple to the telescope, so that they can work without nearly as serious a risk of losing parts while it's disassembled? Whatever they would employ wouldn't have to enclose an atmosphere, but it would provide a room-like feel for astronauts, rather than the current unsurrounded feel. If they drifted away, they would make contact with a wall, and then rebound. Parts that drift would be easily found.
If they felt really adventurous, they could build a module that would be self-contained with an atmosphere that the Hubble could be brought into for service, complete with a personnel airlock, and when not in use be placed into a convenient orbit or else brought down in pieces for later use...
One advantage of having your workers in your office, despite labour costs, is that you can throttle them when they screw up, and the laws that cover labor are known to you directly. Any additional contractual law is also easier to enforce. Also, you can physically chew them out if they keep screwing up, so you have more direct management control.
If they work from home, you don't have nearly the same control as if you walked over to their cubicle to yell, and they're as expensive as they would be in India, to boot. So, you gain nothing by doing this.
Just thinking faster than I can type. Overran the buffer in my brain.
you can definitely that lawyers were involved in answering questions...
If the voting was so incredibly biased, as 400-21 shows, and if the Senate has similarly significant differences with their vote, it would be foolish to veto this. The population is against the media consolidation, and our representatives seem to actually get it, so I hope that the President isn't going to be dumb and try to stop it. He's already unpopular enough...
"DOOM!"
"DOOM2: Hell on Earth"
"No DOOM 3? What the Hell?"
"I just hope they'll be able to stand up better in court than Verizon did."
They have a little more legal sway in terms of sympathetic eyes than Verizon had. They're both extremely reputable institutions, with graduates all over the professional world. Also, since MIT is geek-central, they have a different, probably more personal stake in the situation. They also have legislation regarding student privacy. Many colleges won't give out any information unless it's a "did this person graduate?" kind of resume-related query. So, they have some very legitimate, older laws to fall back on to justify their positions.
"Why must Hollywood send me conflicting messages?"
you need to see Amazon Women on the Moon if you want to see really conflicting. Some "pirates" seize the MCA/Universal ship and steal the movies and video discs. It's an absolutely hilarious segment...
"This I equate with communist radio and communist TV stations telling you how great communism is."
What about capitalist, monopolistic media telling you how great capitalism is?
The "In Capitalism, man exploits man. In Communism, it's the other way around" line is all too accurate.