I think most Americans take citizenship far too lightly, as well as the "franchise right" that comes from being a registered voter.
One of the most special and memorable experiences I went through was the naturalization conference in front of a federal judge with my brother-in-law when he became a U.S. Citizen. He had to go through an interview and demonstrate knowledge about our government that I don't think most high schools seniors could pass.
In some ways, I wish the "native born" citizens would have to go through a similar process just to be able to earn the right to vote. I think it would show up at least in terms of the level of maturity in political discussions, which we currently don't have.
This is precisely why such a movement to change the system within states generally fail. There is too much focus on the current election rather than thinking in the long term how it will benefit all of the political parties... and encourage candidates to fight for each electoral vote in every state rather than simply consider some states to be "safe" and ignore what is going on there.
Colorado defeated a similar measure in 2004, which would have given Kerry some additional electoral votes. Colorado Democrats were so interested in wanting the whole thing that they ended up with nothing... and it was the official opposition by the Colorado Democratic Party that ended up killing the measure.
California won't always be a "blue" state in presidential elections... and when that changes, the Democrats would be wishing they had that 1/3 of the electoral vote for the state.
One of the benefits of doing an election this way is that you need to have broad and widespread support in order to become President of the USA. If you concentrate all of your campaigning in one area, you simply can't win. Giving a special pork program to just the folks in California and New York isn't going to give you enough electoral votes necessary.
In spite of the fact that even with the electoral college that smaller states like Hawaii and Wyoming are usually not watched closely on the national level for their presidential preferences, this does give these smaller states a chance to voice their opinion and make presidential candidates be aware of issues in rural areas as well as major urban centers. This is true not only during the election, but afterward when they are trying to get re-elected as well.
The magnification of the degree of victory is also important, as you are stating here. I also believe that in the long run this is something generally good for the country... although I'm not so sure that the winner-take-all system is necessarily the best method of selecting the electors within each state.
One of the things that surprised me the most in the analysis here is that Hawaii shows up so often in the recent elections as a swing state that could have made a huge difference.
Generally speaking, Hawaii is written off in national elections and only gets marginal attention in Presidential elections. It certainly isn't mentioned as a traditional swing state like Ohio, Michigan, or Florida... perhaps because of the small number of electoral votes. In a close election, however, even a few electoral votes can make a difference.
Other states that perhaps shouldn't have surprised me so much were New Mexico and Iowa... both relatively smaller states but have had close presidential election vote totals as well in several of the past elections. They do show up quite a bit.
For somebody planning a campaigning strategy approach for one of the major candidates, this is some incredibly interesting analysis and could suggest some approaches that haven't been looked at due to "conventional wisdom" thinking some states were more important when some of these smaller states could make a big difference.
BTW, that was a deliberate campaign strategy for the George W. Bush re-election team in 2004.
The winner-take-all selection of state electoral votes isn't something described or even mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.... and it is a mistake to think that it has to be the only system for selecting candidates for the U.S. Presidency either.
I think California would benefit from having a proportional selection of electors, where even a 4%-5% shift in votes would still be gaining a few extra electoral votes for each candidate. It would also give a chance for 3rd party candidates to actually get some legitimate electoral votes... which is perhaps why it won't ever be done.
In U.S. Presidential elections, you are voting for electors, not really candidates. In most states, it is the political parties that decide who get to be electors... and usually send a list of electors to the top state election official prior to the election who will represent the candidate of that party when the election is finally held.
Having been involved with major party politics on the state level (as a convention delegate) I've had the somewhat rare privilege of directly voting on who would get onto that list and help select the actual electors to the electoral college. They are usually strongly loyal political leaders... such as governors or county party chairmen who have been serving for decades or longer.
Each state can have as many electors as they have senators and representatives in the U.S. Congress... although it should be noted that all federal officers... including senators and representatives... are constitutionally prohibited from participating as electors.
Also, once the electors have been selected and elected, they are free to vote for whomever they want... for both President and Vice-President, which are treated as two separate voting opportunities. It is possible to vote for two people (pres/vp) of different political parties... and in fact that has happened in the past. An elector in Texas voted for George H.W. Bush as president and Lloyd Bentson (a democrat) as his vp candidate in the 1988 Presidential election. In a couple of cases, the elector screwed up and got the presidential candidate and the vp candidate messed up... casting the vp candidate as a vote for the president and the presidential candidate as the vp. So far none of these "faithless" electors have made a significant impact on the actual election in terms of changing who the victor of the election may be.
Assuming that something tragically happens between the nomination of the candidate and when the electors actually vote... especially if there is a death of a candidate after the election (natural death or assassination), the electors also serve as a line of authority to help decide who is going to become President without having to go through the whole process of selecting a candidates all over again and another national election. This did happen in the 1872 election with the Democratic candidate.
I should also note that it is up to each state to decide how it selects its electors (in terms of from what parties or how they are selected). Most states do a "winner-take-all" system where the candidate with the most votes gets all of the electors for that state. This is not something in the U.S. Constitution, but rather a custom that has developed over the years... and is not universally followed either. Maine and Nebraska both have a split system where each congressional district votes independently for electors, and then the two "senatorial" electors are decided by the state-wide vote.
I hope this isn't putting up more info than you were asking for. Individual votes from ordinary voters do make a difference... in fact a huge difference.
Since the stations I use are translator stations (usually), most of the frequencies are in the UHF band... although there are a couple of LP "community" stations that were broadcasting in the VHF band. I have a fairly decent UHF antenna that is a directional antenna (not just the silly circle loop), and I've used my VCR as an amplifier to pull in better reception on the analog side (yes, it does help and performs better than the TV amp in most cases).
I'm trying to put the converter box in between the VCR and the antenna, and making the assumption that the UHF frequencies are the ones that carry the DTV signal. The "DTV"-ready antennas are little more than piece of garbage UHF antennas anyway other than they've been re-branded with the "modern" terms.
As for defining television markets.... that is the Neilson company who does that, although you are correct in a fashion that the FCC is involved as well in terms of originally deciding where some of the early VHF broadcasters were permitted to build stations and the allocation of licenses. It is a much criticized process, and the decision to approve a new broadcast station in the more rural parts of America has caused all sorts of problems. Political considerations have played an interesting part in the whole process as well.
What the Nielson company does do is to group broadcast stations together for market monitoring purposes, and noting major population centers within those markets for advertising purposes.
The FM radio stations I listen to will only interrupt their broadcasts for things of dire emergency nature... i.e. imminent attack by nuclear weapons, a hurricane, fire burning down the town, etc. Casual things like thunderstorms don't bring up that level of attention. Then again, tornadoes aren't exactly something that is common where I live (in the middle of the Rocky mountains... then again, Hurricanes aren't likely to get there either). I'm not sure about an earthquake, but you can't exactly predict very well when that is going to happen (yet).
The problem with the NOAA weather radio is that it is on a completely different band of frequencies.... and a band that a typical home radio receiver won't pick up unless you have purchased something explicit for that purpose. Yes, I've seen (even own) emergency radio kits that have this frequency band, but they aren't common to have.
As far as the per-launch costs are concerned... Elon has publicly stated that the development costs aren't going to significantly impact the final production costs... and in fact claims that he is going to reduce the price per launch once they get a good handle on the market and have a more firm grasp of operational costs.
Where they save the money isn't really so much reducing the inspections necessary for flight, but rather reducing the size of the crew necessary to tend, build, and launch the vehicle. Some processes are drastically simplified (for example, the internal diagnostics are done on an internal TCP/IP network instead of dedicated analog lines typical of the Apollo-era rockets) and the fact that they aren't creating "make work" projects for congressional pork.
If the launch crews for the previous three launches of the Falcon 1 are any indication, it is only a dozen or so people at the actual launch site who are directly involved with getting the rocket into orbit. This is contrasted with the 10's of thousands of workers involved with processing and launching the Space Shuttle... just at KSC.
Furthermore, the launch recycling time from abort to re-starting the countdown is incredibly short. On both launch attempts #2 and #3, it was done in less than an hour. The typical industry standard in that situation is about a day to a week. This means that a minor technical issue can be dealt with, the rocket even "repaired", and not even have to give the launch team anything more than a lunch break before having to restart the launch sequence. This alone is an incredible cost savings that in turn reduces the price of flying this spacecraft.
I could go into other areas that SpaceX has pioneered spacecraft development cost reduction, but those are just icing on the cake. They certainly have made a big splash in the spaceflight industry.
It will be interesting to see what is going to happen with the Falcon 9 program. The Falcon 1 is really just a test vehicle (although it is going into production with some paying customers) for the Falcon 9 program. That is when the real fun is going to come in.
The Merlin engine on the Falcon 9 is identical to the one on the Falcon 1.... only it will have more of them running at the same time. The payload capacity of the Falcon 9 is also going to be sufficient to be able to launch a manned capsule (also under development by SpaceX... called the Dragon) that will carry seven astronauts, along with an unpressurized cargo area to haul some more goods with them.
While certainly not capable of launching what the Shuttle or even the Saturn V could do into space, it is rather respectable in its own right. The current launch manifest has the Falcon 9 launching sometime in the first half of next year... pending of course the success of this flight of the Falcon 1.
Older television sets worked better with these weak signals than newer ones. I used to have an old B&W television set with a fairly decent antenna while I lived in the American mid-west (no mountains) and on some nights I could pick up some very distant television stations... usually with quite a bit of snow, but you could pick out the call signs and usually be able to hear what was being said.
Newer television sets have digital amplifiers that cut off this lower threshold on the analog televisions... which enhance strong signals but at the sacrifice of not even giving you the option of tuning in the weak signals. So yeah, I guess this is the kind of floor that you are talking about.
The difference with digital television is that instead of gracefully dropping out with a little bit of snow, the signal simply gets cut off altogether or gets very choppy with MPEG artifacting (from a scrambled signal) or other problems that come up when the digital signal doesn't come in quite so clearly. Often it is so bad that it is unwatchable, even though you know you have a station tuned in.
Explaining the power requirements.... keep in mind that at nighttime, AM broadcast signals will travel much further (due to signals bouncing off of the ionosphere) than during the daytime. For smaller-market stations (as opposed to the "clear channel" major stations in large cities) they have to lower their power so they don't cause interference with other broadcasters that may be using the same broadcasting frequency.
This is why it is an FCC requirement... and something that has been a part of the FCC code for several decades. This isn't something new or a revelation if you are familiar with broadcasting requirements.
You also forgot that almost all digital broadcast television is transmitted at about 10% of the signal power that analog television is being transmitted at.... according to FCC regs even. The "theory" goes that the digital television is such a "superior signal" that it only requires a lower transmission power than what the analog signal is sent at.
If you can get that new decoder that interprets the ones and zeros correctly, and can actually get a digital signal.... yeah, you are correct, that is all you "need" in order to get the digital signal to work.
Oh yeah, make sure you remember you can't program your VCR or other older video equipment to change channels any more, because you are really only stuck with whatever video signal comes out of that DTV converter box. Or other problems that smack you in the head that your perfectly good video equipment is "obsolete" due to this change.
It isn't as wonderful of a change as is being promised.
At least with the conversion from B&W television to color television didn't kill off the all of the older B&W television sets. Or change the quality (or lack thereof) of the viewing experience.
BTW, I also hate the "digitally enhanced" video signal that is coming to my house. Even though (at least for now) I'm receiving an analog signal, the transmitter has been receiving the signal in digital format from the broadcasters for the past two years or so. When a bad storm comes through, the translator station station chops up the signal in a manner that is IMHO unacceptable... I can't even follow the dialog of what is being said usually.
This isn't really an improvement of the television standard.... or at least there are a whole bunch of trade-offs that aren't being talked about.
I consider myself to be technically competent and quite familiar with video protocols... especially digital video formats and transmission requirements.
I also live in a MSA that has over 140,000 people living in it, even though the Neilson company doesn't consider it big enough for classifying it as an independent television market. Yes, I know that there are markets much smaller than this, but it doesn't matter.
The point is, in spite of the fact that I was able to tune in over 10 television stations with the analog signals... most of them quite clearly... I can't pick up a single digital television channel. That by itself isn't so awful other than the fact that the local analog signal has been shut off... at the beginning of this month (September 1st). The city I live in has "officially" already gone through the transition to digital television. I am serious here too... I can't pick up a single channel that even remotely works.
There are some transmitters in a nearby state (about 60 miles away from where I live) that are still broadcasting an analog signal. However, they are about to turn off that signal in about two weeks. Well, I guess I have a good collection of DVDs that I've been buying over the years, and now that most of the decent television series are going onto DVD as well, I can just buy them instead of watching the broadcast television.
What a way to "save" the television industry!
Yes, I have access to things like DirectTV, cable television networks, and other such nonsense. I have my own reasons for not wanting to access broadcast commercial television in such a manner. The point is that it doesn't work!
Oh... about the silly coupon program for the converter boxes. I asked for a coupon back in June... and it never came. My wife (without letting me know first) requested an additional coupon which finally came.... about a month after the switch to digital television. The converter box is about what I was expecting, basically a piece of cheap consumer junk that is completely incompatible with all of the video equipment I have... other than I guess a television signal can get through. My wife hates the thing even more than I do, but at least the FCC can sit back and feel like they have taken care of a family like mine with such a wonderful "improvement" in the technology.
Yeah, right. Improvement. At least I can still pick up gamma rays from the Big Bang on my old analog television, which is as exciting as watching mud dry.
Assuming that they need the video telemetry anyway, and that they have been making some rather public announcements about this launch... I would say it is quite likely.
If you don't want to miss the webcast, make sure you look at the "main page" of the SpaceX website... where they've had links to the webcast on each of the previous launches.
In fairness to SpaceX.... they have been able to make it into space before. They did that on the previous two attempts. Their main problem was one of not being able to stay up there due to crazy problems with their second stage.
I hope that they finally have figured that one out... and the last issue (having the rocket crash into itself and destroy the 2nd stage nozzle as a result) is something they are kicking themselves over even now.
The rocket they have built is certainly more than capable of getting up to space and maintaining orbital velocities.
I'm assuming this is a joke, intended to get a few funny mod points here.
If this were serious, of course some occasional parts that are likely to be good but have a question of doubt that they may be bad are replaced. Heck, I do that when I'm repairing my automobile... for exactly the very same reason. If I'm digging into the timing belt and I know the water pump has 50,000 miles on it, I'll change it (the water pump) out even if it is presumably working just fine... just to give an example.
This is good maintenance practice, and how you keep things flying. It is also called rocket science here.
There seems to be a group of folks who like to "purify" a community website, and to be honest I don't even know what makes these kind of folks tick.
I tend to be an inclusionist/separatist in my attitude toward wiki projects and content. By this I mean that content ought to be given time to develop, even if it seems crazy and off the wall. By being a separatist, I think the mergist viewpoint is full of logical errors and that most calls to merge two articles together are mainly a variant of deletionists who think that such petty articles about obscure topics need to go... but with the "good vibes" that somehow the topic will be covered in some huge all-encompassing article.
There are some things that do need to go on occasion, but I've also seen some of the most creative applications of Wiki technology get developed when somebody pushes the edge of a project and develops something way out of bounds. Indeed some of these extreme projects have become out right independent Wikimedia projects of their own, including things like Wikibooks, Wikinews, and even Wiktionary that all had their origins on Wikipedia until some deletionist decided to kick them off.
This phenomena unfortunately isn't even limited to Wikipedia and the WMF sister projects either, but is widespread in nearly any wiki project I've been involved with. Indeed, I've found that the relatively flat peer-editing model of Wikipedia tends to keep the worst of these issues in check as opposed to much worse sorts of community editing models like the Open Directory Project.
The problem here is who has responsibility for removing the content from Wikipedia, and who would get sued if the content remained there.
The Wikimedia Foundation is claiming status as an Internet Service Provider in terms of copyright law, and they don't (usually) assert copyright privileges over Wikipedia.
In this case, the WMF is setting themselves up to be sued by the users who created these categories in the first place, demanding that the information be restored because the removal of that information was without merit. Sort of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
IMHO that really is the next step that needs to happen, if the individual(s) who created these categories and/or those who helped put content into those categories want to push back legally and/or within the Wikipedia arbitration system. The legal questions of the DMCA notice perhaps ought to be resolved first, but the internal Wikipedia politics is an issue as well.
The only issue here is not even the name "Nielson", but rather if this may be a trademark abuse. I find that a real stretch, and even then the DMCA isn't going to be the proper tool to enforce this sort of issue.
In a way, Nielson has brought this on themselves, as they have promoted this sort of geographical organization to promote advertising, and others are using this arrangement including the market rankings for purposes that have little, if anything, to do with actually measuring audience share.
Certainly political organizations use this information for determining advertising and marketing strategies, as well as marketing firms using these Nielson regions for dividing up sales territories. In other words, Nielson is a victim of its own success in this regard.
I used to work for a video monitoring company (they did transcripts for various TV news shows) that had specific Nielson markets used in internal documentation for assigning individual employees in terms of whom they would be monitoring. We didn't even refer to the markets by geographic name but rather by their national ranking (aka 1==NYC, 2==Los Angeles, etc.). There was no legal relationship between this company and Nielson, nor do I know of any formal permission to use that information in this manner.
As far as trademarking "Nielson" in relationship to advertising markets, I don't think its use in Wikipedia is diluting the value of that trademark, and in fact may be a positive one in terms of associating the company who provides this sort of service more directly with the advertising regions. They may even be shooting themselves in the foot in terms of "free advertising" in a medium that normally doesn't allow advertising.
I highly doubt that a popular movement (aka well > 50% of the voting population of that state) within a state to secede from the USA would be met with significant resistance on the part of the Federal government, previous SCOTUS rulings to the contrary. It wouldn't even be the realm of the court system anyway, but would be a political situation to be dealt with by the President and Congress.
I'll say it again, it wasn't the secession that was at issue (originally), but rather the open rebellion and declaration of war against the Federal government that triggered the actual fighting. Furthermore, additional actions in support of the rebellion in states that had not formally seceded (including in Maryland that never actually did leave the union) were actions that brought out open warfare.
Had cooler heads prevailed in South Carolina, they may have actually been able to succeed in their endeavor to leave the USA. Certainly the debates between members of Congress and/or negotiations between the Secretary of State and representatives of various state governments would have been interesting if the sentiment for secession continued without large scale bloodshed.
Silly lawsuits like the one you are citing here (Texas vs. White) don't represent formal actions taken by state legislatures and governors wishing for a break in relations, as the issue at hand in that case was more about the technical status of Texas as a state during the Confederate period, and an individual trying to weasel their way through this obscure legal "loophole" claiming special privileges due to political instability of the era. SCOTUS, in my opinion, found the correct answer even if the rationale is dubious. It certainly isn't precedent setting in terms of a popular movement for secession.
It would be interesting to see what votes would be given for write-in candidates.
Even more interesting: What would happen if this became a write-in campaign and the votes for President and Vice-President went to different parties: I.E. a majority of Texans voting for Obama for Pres and Palin for VP? This happening because a number of voters don't even bother writing in the VP name, and those that do write the VP candidate down end up winning by default?
This could be a fun election on a number of fronts, and it would be an amazing election if this were to happen.
The district election system you are suggesting already exists!
Unfortunately, it is only implemented in two rather insignificant states in terms of national elections: Nebraska and Maine.
It would be interesting if a slightly larger state or two were to adopt this system in some way, but unfortunately Ohio and Florida like being the center of national attention with a winner take all system. That is the deliberate choice of the state legislatures to do it this way, not something mandated by the U.S. Constitution or by federal legislation.
There are multiple methods of allocating electoral votes, and the "winner takes all" system isn't even spelled out in the U.S. Constitution. It isn't even the only method used for allocation of electoral votes in each state.
Maine and Nebraska use a system of allocating the two votes for the senate as "winner take all" for the state-wide vote, and then allow each congressional district an independent vote... with each district's electoral vote allocated by the highest vote within that district. California and Florida would have both been "split" votes under such a system if those states were to switch to such a system.
Colorado in 2004 tried to set up a purely proportional voting system for electoral votes... and was voted down due to Democratic (big "D") opposition that ultimately hurt John Kerry in that Presidential election anyway. Again, if some of the larger states like Florida, California, or Texas were to vote this way, you would certainly see more attention to even subtle shifts in popular opinion in these states. Texas wouldn't have just 2 or 3 "blue" votes, but a whole bunch... possibly a few "green" votes (from 3rd parties) thrown in for good measure.
One other thing to consider... without even amending the constitution or any such nonsense... is to simply increase the number of representatives in Congress. What is up with the magic number 435? Even a modest increase to around 500 would give better representation in the House as well as better proportional representation in Presidential elections as well.
Those who complain about the electoral college often don't understand modest changes that could be done without having to completely overhaul the system... and could have a major impact on how candidates actually campaign if these modest changes were implemented.
I do agree, however, that changes can and should happen with the electoral college.
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I think most Americans take citizenship far too lightly, as well as the "franchise right" that comes from being a registered voter.
One of the most special and memorable experiences I went through was the naturalization conference in front of a federal judge with my brother-in-law when he became a U.S. Citizen. He had to go through an interview and demonstrate knowledge about our government that I don't think most high schools seniors could pass.
In some ways, I wish the "native born" citizens would have to go through a similar process just to be able to earn the right to vote. I think it would show up at least in terms of the level of maturity in political discussions, which we currently don't have.
This is precisely why such a movement to change the system within states generally fail. There is too much focus on the current election rather than thinking in the long term how it will benefit all of the political parties... and encourage candidates to fight for each electoral vote in every state rather than simply consider some states to be "safe" and ignore what is going on there.
Colorado defeated a similar measure in 2004, which would have given Kerry some additional electoral votes. Colorado Democrats were so interested in wanting the whole thing that they ended up with nothing... and it was the official opposition by the Colorado Democratic Party that ended up killing the measure.
California won't always be a "blue" state in presidential elections... and when that changes, the Democrats would be wishing they had that 1/3 of the electoral vote for the state.
One of the benefits of doing an election this way is that you need to have broad and widespread support in order to become President of the USA. If you concentrate all of your campaigning in one area, you simply can't win. Giving a special pork program to just the folks in California and New York isn't going to give you enough electoral votes necessary.
In spite of the fact that even with the electoral college that smaller states like Hawaii and Wyoming are usually not watched closely on the national level for their presidential preferences, this does give these smaller states a chance to voice their opinion and make presidential candidates be aware of issues in rural areas as well as major urban centers. This is true not only during the election, but afterward when they are trying to get re-elected as well.
The magnification of the degree of victory is also important, as you are stating here. I also believe that in the long run this is something generally good for the country... although I'm not so sure that the winner-take-all system is necessarily the best method of selecting the electors within each state.
One of the things that surprised me the most in the analysis here is that Hawaii shows up so often in the recent elections as a swing state that could have made a huge difference.
Generally speaking, Hawaii is written off in national elections and only gets marginal attention in Presidential elections. It certainly isn't mentioned as a traditional swing state like Ohio, Michigan, or Florida... perhaps because of the small number of electoral votes. In a close election, however, even a few electoral votes can make a difference.
Other states that perhaps shouldn't have surprised me so much were New Mexico and Iowa... both relatively smaller states but have had close presidential election vote totals as well in several of the past elections. They do show up quite a bit.
For somebody planning a campaigning strategy approach for one of the major candidates, this is some incredibly interesting analysis and could suggest some approaches that haven't been looked at due to "conventional wisdom" thinking some states were more important when some of these smaller states could make a big difference.
BTW, that was a deliberate campaign strategy for the George W. Bush re-election team in 2004.
The winner-take-all selection of state electoral votes isn't something described or even mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.... and it is a mistake to think that it has to be the only system for selecting candidates for the U.S. Presidency either.
I think California would benefit from having a proportional selection of electors, where even a 4%-5% shift in votes would still be gaining a few extra electoral votes for each candidate. It would also give a chance for 3rd party candidates to actually get some legitimate electoral votes... which is perhaps why it won't ever be done.
In U.S. Presidential elections, you are voting for electors, not really candidates. In most states, it is the political parties that decide who get to be electors... and usually send a list of electors to the top state election official prior to the election who will represent the candidate of that party when the election is finally held.
Having been involved with major party politics on the state level (as a convention delegate) I've had the somewhat rare privilege of directly voting on who would get onto that list and help select the actual electors to the electoral college. They are usually strongly loyal political leaders... such as governors or county party chairmen who have been serving for decades or longer.
Each state can have as many electors as they have senators and representatives in the U.S. Congress... although it should be noted that all federal officers... including senators and representatives... are constitutionally prohibited from participating as electors.
Also, once the electors have been selected and elected, they are free to vote for whomever they want... for both President and Vice-President, which are treated as two separate voting opportunities. It is possible to vote for two people (pres/vp) of different political parties... and in fact that has happened in the past. An elector in Texas voted for George H.W. Bush as president and Lloyd Bentson (a democrat) as his vp candidate in the 1988 Presidential election. In a couple of cases, the elector screwed up and got the presidential candidate and the vp candidate messed up... casting the vp candidate as a vote for the president and the presidential candidate as the vp. So far none of these "faithless" electors have made a significant impact on the actual election in terms of changing who the victor of the election may be.
Assuming that something tragically happens between the nomination of the candidate and when the electors actually vote... especially if there is a death of a candidate after the election (natural death or assassination), the electors also serve as a line of authority to help decide who is going to become President without having to go through the whole process of selecting a candidates all over again and another national election. This did happen in the 1872 election with the Democratic candidate.
I should also note that it is up to each state to decide how it selects its electors (in terms of from what parties or how they are selected). Most states do a "winner-take-all" system where the candidate with the most votes gets all of the electors for that state. This is not something in the U.S. Constitution, but rather a custom that has developed over the years... and is not universally followed either. Maine and Nebraska both have a split system where each congressional district votes independently for electors, and then the two "senatorial" electors are decided by the state-wide vote.
I hope this isn't putting up more info than you were asking for. Individual votes from ordinary voters do make a difference... in fact a huge difference.
Since the stations I use are translator stations (usually), most of the frequencies are in the UHF band... although there are a couple of LP "community" stations that were broadcasting in the VHF band. I have a fairly decent UHF antenna that is a directional antenna (not just the silly circle loop), and I've used my VCR as an amplifier to pull in better reception on the analog side (yes, it does help and performs better than the TV amp in most cases).
I'm trying to put the converter box in between the VCR and the antenna, and making the assumption that the UHF frequencies are the ones that carry the DTV signal. The "DTV"-ready antennas are little more than piece of garbage UHF antennas anyway other than they've been re-branded with the "modern" terms.
As for defining television markets.... that is the Neilson company who does that, although you are correct in a fashion that the FCC is involved as well in terms of originally deciding where some of the early VHF broadcasters were permitted to build stations and the allocation of licenses. It is a much criticized process, and the decision to approve a new broadcast station in the more rural parts of America has caused all sorts of problems. Political considerations have played an interesting part in the whole process as well.
What the Nielson company does do is to group broadcast stations together for market monitoring purposes, and noting major population centers within those markets for advertising purposes.
The FM radio stations I listen to will only interrupt their broadcasts for things of dire emergency nature... i.e. imminent attack by nuclear weapons, a hurricane, fire burning down the town, etc. Casual things like thunderstorms don't bring up that level of attention. Then again, tornadoes aren't exactly something that is common where I live (in the middle of the Rocky mountains... then again, Hurricanes aren't likely to get there either). I'm not sure about an earthquake, but you can't exactly predict very well when that is going to happen (yet).
The problem with the NOAA weather radio is that it is on a completely different band of frequencies.... and a band that a typical home radio receiver won't pick up unless you have purchased something explicit for that purpose. Yes, I've seen (even own) emergency radio kits that have this frequency band, but they aren't common to have.
As far as the per-launch costs are concerned... Elon has publicly stated that the development costs aren't going to significantly impact the final production costs... and in fact claims that he is going to reduce the price per launch once they get a good handle on the market and have a more firm grasp of operational costs.
Where they save the money isn't really so much reducing the inspections necessary for flight, but rather reducing the size of the crew necessary to tend, build, and launch the vehicle. Some processes are drastically simplified (for example, the internal diagnostics are done on an internal TCP/IP network instead of dedicated analog lines typical of the Apollo-era rockets) and the fact that they aren't creating "make work" projects for congressional pork.
If the launch crews for the previous three launches of the Falcon 1 are any indication, it is only a dozen or so people at the actual launch site who are directly involved with getting the rocket into orbit. This is contrasted with the 10's of thousands of workers involved with processing and launching the Space Shuttle... just at KSC.
Furthermore, the launch recycling time from abort to re-starting the countdown is incredibly short. On both launch attempts #2 and #3, it was done in less than an hour. The typical industry standard in that situation is about a day to a week. This means that a minor technical issue can be dealt with, the rocket even "repaired", and not even have to give the launch team anything more than a lunch break before having to restart the launch sequence. This alone is an incredible cost savings that in turn reduces the price of flying this spacecraft.
I could go into other areas that SpaceX has pioneered spacecraft development cost reduction, but those are just icing on the cake. They certainly have made a big splash in the spaceflight industry.
It will be interesting to see what is going to happen with the Falcon 9 program. The Falcon 1 is really just a test vehicle (although it is going into production with some paying customers) for the Falcon 9 program. That is when the real fun is going to come in.
The Merlin engine on the Falcon 9 is identical to the one on the Falcon 1.... only it will have more of them running at the same time. The payload capacity of the Falcon 9 is also going to be sufficient to be able to launch a manned capsule (also under development by SpaceX... called the Dragon) that will carry seven astronauts, along with an unpressurized cargo area to haul some more goods with them.
While certainly not capable of launching what the Shuttle or even the Saturn V could do into space, it is rather respectable in its own right. The current launch manifest has the Falcon 9 launching sometime in the first half of next year... pending of course the success of this flight of the Falcon 1.
Older television sets worked better with these weak signals than newer ones. I used to have an old B&W television set with a fairly decent antenna while I lived in the American mid-west (no mountains) and on some nights I could pick up some very distant television stations... usually with quite a bit of snow, but you could pick out the call signs and usually be able to hear what was being said.
Newer television sets have digital amplifiers that cut off this lower threshold on the analog televisions... which enhance strong signals but at the sacrifice of not even giving you the option of tuning in the weak signals. So yeah, I guess this is the kind of floor that you are talking about.
The difference with digital television is that instead of gracefully dropping out with a little bit of snow, the signal simply gets cut off altogether or gets very choppy with MPEG artifacting (from a scrambled signal) or other problems that come up when the digital signal doesn't come in quite so clearly. Often it is so bad that it is unwatchable, even though you know you have a station tuned in.
Explaining the power requirements.... keep in mind that at nighttime, AM broadcast signals will travel much further (due to signals bouncing off of the ionosphere) than during the daytime. For smaller-market stations (as opposed to the "clear channel" major stations in large cities) they have to lower their power so they don't cause interference with other broadcasters that may be using the same broadcasting frequency.
This is why it is an FCC requirement... and something that has been a part of the FCC code for several decades. This isn't something new or a revelation if you are familiar with broadcasting requirements.
You also forgot that almost all digital broadcast television is transmitted at about 10% of the signal power that analog television is being transmitted at.... according to FCC regs even. The "theory" goes that the digital television is such a "superior signal" that it only requires a lower transmission power than what the analog signal is sent at.
If you can get that new decoder that interprets the ones and zeros correctly, and can actually get a digital signal.... yeah, you are correct, that is all you "need" in order to get the digital signal to work.
Oh yeah, make sure you remember you can't program your VCR or other older video equipment to change channels any more, because you are really only stuck with whatever video signal comes out of that DTV converter box. Or other problems that smack you in the head that your perfectly good video equipment is "obsolete" due to this change.
It isn't as wonderful of a change as is being promised.
At least with the conversion from B&W television to color television didn't kill off the all of the older B&W television sets. Or change the quality (or lack thereof) of the viewing experience.
BTW, I also hate the "digitally enhanced" video signal that is coming to my house. Even though (at least for now) I'm receiving an analog signal, the transmitter has been receiving the signal in digital format from the broadcasters for the past two years or so. When a bad storm comes through, the translator station station chops up the signal in a manner that is IMHO unacceptable... I can't even follow the dialog of what is being said usually.
This isn't really an improvement of the television standard.... or at least there are a whole bunch of trade-offs that aren't being talked about.
I consider myself to be technically competent and quite familiar with video protocols... especially digital video formats and transmission requirements.
I also live in a MSA that has over 140,000 people living in it, even though the Neilson company doesn't consider it big enough for classifying it as an independent television market. Yes, I know that there are markets much smaller than this, but it doesn't matter.
The point is, in spite of the fact that I was able to tune in over 10 television stations with the analog signals... most of them quite clearly... I can't pick up a single digital television channel. That by itself isn't so awful other than the fact that the local analog signal has been shut off... at the beginning of this month (September 1st). The city I live in has "officially" already gone through the transition to digital television. I am serious here too... I can't pick up a single channel that even remotely works.
There are some transmitters in a nearby state (about 60 miles away from where I live) that are still broadcasting an analog signal. However, they are about to turn off that signal in about two weeks. Well, I guess I have a good collection of DVDs that I've been buying over the years, and now that most of the decent television series are going onto DVD as well, I can just buy them instead of watching the broadcast television.
What a way to "save" the television industry!
Yes, I have access to things like DirectTV, cable television networks, and other such nonsense. I have my own reasons for not wanting to access broadcast commercial television in such a manner. The point is that it doesn't work!
Oh... about the silly coupon program for the converter boxes. I asked for a coupon back in June... and it never came. My wife (without letting me know first) requested an additional coupon which finally came.... about a month after the switch to digital television. The converter box is about what I was expecting, basically a piece of cheap consumer junk that is completely incompatible with all of the video equipment I have... other than I guess a television signal can get through. My wife hates the thing even more than I do, but at least the FCC can sit back and feel like they have taken care of a family like mine with such a wonderful "improvement" in the technology.
Yeah, right. Improvement. At least I can still pick up gamma rays from the Big Bang on my old analog television, which is as exciting as watching mud dry.
Assuming that they need the video telemetry anyway, and that they have been making some rather public announcements about this launch... I would say it is quite likely.
If you don't want to miss the webcast, make sure you look at the "main page" of the SpaceX website... where they've had links to the webcast on each of the previous launches.
http://spacex.com/
In fairness to SpaceX.... they have been able to make it into space before. They did that on the previous two attempts. Their main problem was one of not being able to stay up there due to crazy problems with their second stage.
I hope that they finally have figured that one out... and the last issue (having the rocket crash into itself and destroy the 2nd stage nozzle as a result) is something they are kicking themselves over even now.
The rocket they have built is certainly more than capable of getting up to space and maintaining orbital velocities.
I'm assuming this is a joke, intended to get a few funny mod points here.
If this were serious, of course some occasional parts that are likely to be good but have a question of doubt that they may be bad are replaced. Heck, I do that when I'm repairing my automobile... for exactly the very same reason. If I'm digging into the timing belt and I know the water pump has 50,000 miles on it, I'll change it (the water pump) out even if it is presumably working just fine... just to give an example.
This is good maintenance practice, and how you keep things flying. It is also called rocket science here.
There seems to be a group of folks who like to "purify" a community website, and to be honest I don't even know what makes these kind of folks tick.
I tend to be an inclusionist/separatist in my attitude toward wiki projects and content. By this I mean that content ought to be given time to develop, even if it seems crazy and off the wall. By being a separatist, I think the mergist viewpoint is full of logical errors and that most calls to merge two articles together are mainly a variant of deletionists who think that such petty articles about obscure topics need to go... but with the "good vibes" that somehow the topic will be covered in some huge all-encompassing article.
There are some things that do need to go on occasion, but I've also seen some of the most creative applications of Wiki technology get developed when somebody pushes the edge of a project and develops something way out of bounds. Indeed some of these extreme projects have become out right independent Wikimedia projects of their own, including things like Wikibooks, Wikinews, and even Wiktionary that all had their origins on Wikipedia until some deletionist decided to kick them off.
This phenomena unfortunately isn't even limited to Wikipedia and the WMF sister projects either, but is widespread in nearly any wiki project I've been involved with. Indeed, I've found that the relatively flat peer-editing model of Wikipedia tends to keep the worst of these issues in check as opposed to much worse sorts of community editing models like the Open Directory Project.
The problem here is who has responsibility for removing the content from Wikipedia, and who would get sued if the content remained there.
The Wikimedia Foundation is claiming status as an Internet Service Provider in terms of copyright law, and they don't (usually) assert copyright privileges over Wikipedia.
In this case, the WMF is setting themselves up to be sued by the users who created these categories in the first place, demanding that the information be restored because the removal of that information was without merit. Sort of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
IMHO that really is the next step that needs to happen, if the individual(s) who created these categories and/or those who helped put content into those categories want to push back legally and/or within the Wikipedia arbitration system. The legal questions of the DMCA notice perhaps ought to be resolved first, but the internal Wikipedia politics is an issue as well.
The only issue here is not even the name "Nielson", but rather if this may be a trademark abuse. I find that a real stretch, and even then the DMCA isn't going to be the proper tool to enforce this sort of issue.
In a way, Nielson has brought this on themselves, as they have promoted this sort of geographical organization to promote advertising, and others are using this arrangement including the market rankings for purposes that have little, if anything, to do with actually measuring audience share.
Certainly political organizations use this information for determining advertising and marketing strategies, as well as marketing firms using these Nielson regions for dividing up sales territories. In other words, Nielson is a victim of its own success in this regard.
I used to work for a video monitoring company (they did transcripts for various TV news shows) that had specific Nielson markets used in internal documentation for assigning individual employees in terms of whom they would be monitoring. We didn't even refer to the markets by geographic name but rather by their national ranking (aka 1==NYC, 2==Los Angeles, etc.). There was no legal relationship between this company and Nielson, nor do I know of any formal permission to use that information in this manner.
As far as trademarking "Nielson" in relationship to advertising markets, I don't think its use in Wikipedia is diluting the value of that trademark, and in fact may be a positive one in terms of associating the company who provides this sort of service more directly with the advertising regions. They may even be shooting themselves in the foot in terms of "free advertising" in a medium that normally doesn't allow advertising.
I highly doubt that a popular movement (aka well > 50% of the voting population of that state) within a state to secede from the USA would be met with significant resistance on the part of the Federal government, previous SCOTUS rulings to the contrary. It wouldn't even be the realm of the court system anyway, but would be a political situation to be dealt with by the President and Congress.
I'll say it again, it wasn't the secession that was at issue (originally), but rather the open rebellion and declaration of war against the Federal government that triggered the actual fighting. Furthermore, additional actions in support of the rebellion in states that had not formally seceded (including in Maryland that never actually did leave the union) were actions that brought out open warfare.
Had cooler heads prevailed in South Carolina, they may have actually been able to succeed in their endeavor to leave the USA. Certainly the debates between members of Congress and/or negotiations between the Secretary of State and representatives of various state governments would have been interesting if the sentiment for secession continued without large scale bloodshed.
Silly lawsuits like the one you are citing here (Texas vs. White) don't represent formal actions taken by state legislatures and governors wishing for a break in relations, as the issue at hand in that case was more about the technical status of Texas as a state during the Confederate period, and an individual trying to weasel their way through this obscure legal "loophole" claiming special privileges due to political instability of the era. SCOTUS, in my opinion, found the correct answer even if the rationale is dubious. It certainly isn't precedent setting in terms of a popular movement for secession.
It would be interesting to see what votes would be given for write-in candidates.
Even more interesting: What would happen if this became a write-in campaign and the votes for President and Vice-President went to different parties: I.E. a majority of Texans voting for Obama for Pres and Palin for VP? This happening because a number of voters don't even bother writing in the VP name, and those that do write the VP candidate down end up winning by default?
This could be a fun election on a number of fronts, and it would be an amazing election if this were to happen.
The district election system you are suggesting already exists!
Unfortunately, it is only implemented in two rather insignificant states in terms of national elections: Nebraska and Maine.
It would be interesting if a slightly larger state or two were to adopt this system in some way, but unfortunately Ohio and Florida like being the center of national attention with a winner take all system. That is the deliberate choice of the state legislatures to do it this way, not something mandated by the U.S. Constitution or by federal legislation.
There are multiple methods of allocating electoral votes, and the "winner takes all" system isn't even spelled out in the U.S. Constitution. It isn't even the only method used for allocation of electoral votes in each state.
Maine and Nebraska use a system of allocating the two votes for the senate as "winner take all" for the state-wide vote, and then allow each congressional district an independent vote... with each district's electoral vote allocated by the highest vote within that district. California and Florida would have both been "split" votes under such a system if those states were to switch to such a system.
Colorado in 2004 tried to set up a purely proportional voting system for electoral votes... and was voted down due to Democratic (big "D") opposition that ultimately hurt John Kerry in that Presidential election anyway. Again, if some of the larger states like Florida, California, or Texas were to vote this way, you would certainly see more attention to even subtle shifts in popular opinion in these states. Texas wouldn't have just 2 or 3 "blue" votes, but a whole bunch... possibly a few "green" votes (from 3rd parties) thrown in for good measure.
One other thing to consider... without even amending the constitution or any such nonsense... is to simply increase the number of representatives in Congress. What is up with the magic number 435? Even a modest increase to around 500 would give better representation in the House as well as better proportional representation in Presidential elections as well.
Those who complain about the electoral college often don't understand modest changes that could be done without having to completely overhaul the system... and could have a major impact on how candidates actually campaign if these modest changes were implemented.
I do agree, however, that changes can and should happen with the electoral college.