It just goes to show you that you need to learn local customs before you try to do something in a foreign country. It just so happens that lawyers are a part of the American culture, for good or ill. In all this you didn't even touch on conflicting state and local juristictional questions, not to mention overlapping oversight regarding what governmental agency is actually in charge (like the FCC trying to regulate spaceflight. Yes, I spelled FCC correctly, not FAA).
Many companies like Scaled Composites or Armadillo Aeropsace are formed in the USA, and truth be told, many of those restrictions you are complaining about are in place precisely to discourage foreign investment when local investors will do a good enough job. Most local communities are not looking for foreign investment anyway, and those who do usually get burned in the process.
While I'm sure if Paramount could if it were possible to formally trademark the phrase "U.S.S. Enterprise", since it is the name of an actual ship not owned by Paramount I think it would be more problematic for Paramount Pictures to be able to enforce that trademark.
The name "USS Enterprise" has a long and distinguished history going all the way back to the administration of George Washington. There isn't going to be judge in the USA that will seriously recognise trademark usage except by the U.S. Navy for that term. I think Richard Branson is very safe by using that name.
Being piloted by a Capt. James T. Kirk (or even Capt. Sulu) on the other hand....
I remember a story about old Soviet Russia where the KGB deliberatly messed up the maps of Moscow so "spies" wouldn't be able to get accurate information. This included everything from tourist maps to plaquards in the subway system. Everyday Moscovites would know where to go, and with the high level of security they couldn't simply wander around town too much anyway.
The ongoing joke in Moscow was that the best maps of the city were found in the American Embassy, which were commonly purchased by Taxi drivers.
I'd love some attribution to this story, and it seems unfortunate that the U.S. government is encouraging behavior more and more like the old Soviet government.
I have to point out that it is a Very Good Thing(tm) that even if you have a $25 million reward on your head that it is still possible to go somewhere in this world and tell the U.S. government to "go to hell".
Do you really want it to be possible not to evade the U.S. government if you really want to get outta Dodge? Do you want to have an organization, any group, so effecient that they really will know where you are and what you are doing 24/7/365/100 years?
Osama gives me some hope that at least in theory I could go somewhere and not have to worry about what the occupant of the White House is and what their opinion of me is.
This is not to say that I approve of Mr Bin Laden's actions. I really don't agree with them at all, nor his political views. This also shows just how big this world is, and that trying to track somebody down who is deleberately trying to hide is a very difficult proposition.
For all I know, Osama is somewhere in California growing marijuana to pass the time of day. At least it wouldn't surprise me if he were found in some remote wilderness area in California...or even Texas for that matter. What about Columbia or Peru? How certain are you that he is even in Southwest Asia?
No it wouldn't. It means they can maintain a nuclear power plant, which is a totally different beast. Besides, having nuclear bomb capabilities requires not just the plant, but being able to modify designs beyond normal international controls (i.e. refining and concentrating fissionable materials), and having a totally seperate security detail/military branch that is dedicated to housing, manitaining, and controlling the physical bombs themselves. That is even seperate from delevery systems, which I've pointed out are not trivial either, but are at least within the line of a normal military mission. North Korea at least has plenty of soldiers.
I'm just trying to point out that the possession of nuclear bombs is not a trivial thing, and even if the USA were to give a country like Granada or Trinidad & Tobago a nuke (thus making them technically a nuclear power), there is absolutely no way that either of those countries could possibly maintain the infrastructure necessary to keep them.
BTW, this isn't totally without precedence either. Kazakstan was for awhile after the collapse of the Soviet Union a nuclear power, and relished in the fact that they were in that unique status. They put a whole lot of effort into keeping the nukes under control that they had, and finally realized just how stinking expensive it was to maintain a nuclear arsenal. After some humming and hawing I think they gave them to Russia just to get them off their hands. Kazakstan still maintains nuclear power plants, and has the engineers necessary to maintain and potentially build new plants if necessary. I think that the Ukraine does maintain its leftover arsenal as well, but even they have scaled back their nuclear arms substantially from what they had immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I might also add that both Russia and America have cut back the number of nukes in their stockpiles, also in part because of the huge cost of simply maintaining them. Yes, the S.T.A.R.T. talks did orgainize a formal process for doing this, but if it weren't economically important to dismantel nukes this wouldn't have happened.
In short, I think North Korea could possibly build and maintain a couple (5-20 max) nuclear warheads, but doing so will essentially bankrupt their rather fragile economy as well. I know maintaining the nuclear arsenal in America isn't cheap, and America has the cash to burn. North Korea absolutely doesn't.
Re:Those stats don't really mean much though
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That is precisely what this site, from my view, is trying to imply. Also, in California there are some bills before the state legislature to grant the vote to illegal aliens, or even green card holders. I think this is an incredibly stupid idea, but even so, the concept is being thrown around.
I wasn't refering to stable missile systems in order to get a nuke somewhere. It can be carried by car, boat, plane, or even a backpacker (well, perhaps not on foot so much, but the Vietcong were able to transport MIG aircraft by foot over a dirt footpath, and a nuke wouldn't have been too much harder).
The trick is simply trying to maintain the nuke itself. That is what I question regarding North Korea. It requires a certain amount of national infrastructure in order to get that accomplished, which also takes several billion dollars (or the local currency equivalent) to do that. This is not something that Mr. Wm. H. Gates III could do if he sold all of his M$ stock at current market value. It takes people with even more money than that. Perhaps a multi-national conglomerate, but even that would be tough to pull off.
I think North Korea is right on the fiscal boundrary of being able to afford the systems to keep even a couple of nukes around. They won't be mass producing them any time soon, unless they plan on using them very soon as well.
I don't know what your source of information is, but according to the Indian government they have been a nuclear power since 1974. That jibes with my own recollections from when the tests were first publicly announced. That is, if I can do math correctly, over 30 years ago, not just 3 or 4 years ago. They tried to produce these weapons for even longer than that.
When the most recent round of negotiations between India and Pakistan broke down, there were people in both countries that felt they could survive an all-out nuclear war between each other. The people in key leadership positions however knew better and chose a more diplomatic route to resolve the issues.
What doesn't get mentioned in the whole nuclear arms debate is that there is a size limitation on what national resources it takes to maintain a nuclear arsenal. Building a nuke in the first place is somewhat difficult, but keeping them armed and available at a moment notice (the only real reason to have them as a deterant) is incredibly expensive. You really need the resources of a major nation to do that effectively. The current issue is mainly that some countries have figured out how to reduce that cost, and hence it is more affordable for more countries than it was in the 1950's.
Still, it takes more than a few people with PhD level of knowledge of nuclear physics that are also loyal to your government to even maintain a single nuclear bomb. Also not acknowledged is that there are a number of ways to trace nuclear bombs after they have been detonated. The country that supplied and manufactured a detonated nuclear bomb should be held financially, diplomatically, and militarily responsible for the results of its use. I think it would also be clear that any nation that used nukes would be an international parriah, even the USA. It could be argued that some nations are upset at the USA precisely because of that fact.
Iran is indeed large enough and has enough talented people that it can likely obatin nuclear weapons without any outside help. In the case of North Korea, between what the USA and China have both supplied with some very schrewd negotiations to keep those two countries from knowing their (North Korea's) real intentions have given them the infrastructure to build nukes. I'm not convinced though that North Korea can maintain them by getting new fissionable material, security safeguards (to keep themselves from getting wiped off the map if the nukes get misused), or even the delivery systems necessary to get the bombs where they need them the most (like Seoul in the case of North Korea). All of these costs substantially increase and even grow per bomb as you get more bombs, so an overall arms race ends up being self-defeating. In other words, there is no economy of scale on the production of nuclear bombs.
Terrorist groups would necessarily have to obtain nukes from a nation-state. Unlike RPG's or even plastic explosives, this is not something you can make in your basement for crude versions of these weapons. I would not want to be the country that supplied such a weapon.
On the other side of the equation, however, a terrorist group isn't so concerned about the security and maintainence aspects of nukes. The intention is to use it nearly immediately after it is built or obtained. The problem there, however, is that it is easiest to get nukes in places where nukes would be of little use, and transporting a nuke across international borders is going to get whomever is doing that capital punishment, even in anti-capital punishment countries like France or Germany. I would dare anybody, particularly a French citizen, to keep from tearing up anybody who brought a nuke into France without the French governments authorization. I would personally kill with my bare hands anybody who tried to bring a nuke into America, or donate to the defense fund of anybody who kills, maims, or disables anybody doing so on American soil.
O
Re:Those stats don't really mean much though
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While an interest in the outcome of elections in the USA might be one thing, and certainly it is a big deal in regards to the actions of many other nations, an interest does not directly imply that you should have a vote.
In the case of New Zealand, I certainly hope that you are voting for your own parliment and choosing leaders who know when to give support to the USA (such as if Chinese troops land in California) and when to say "screw you" or some other more diplomatic phrase if the US President is telling you that the USA is going in to invade France again, this time to conquor the French Government and put in something in place more to the liking of the USA, and he is expecting to activate the ANZUS alliance over this invasion.
New Zealand is clearly an independent nation and does not have a direct stake in the outcome of the President of the USA. On the other hand, by my living in Utah, I do have to worry about what laws he signs and when the President sends my friends and co-worker to war (with hopfully the approval and declaration of the Senate...an important but seemingly forgotten safeguard even in the U.S. Senate).
BTW, as an American, I find that the selection of PM in England is of significance, and the popular news media here does indeed cover it, together with the selection of Presidents of Russia and France or even the Prime Minister of India. Whenever the head of state for a nuclear war power changes, it should be of concern to the rest of the world for a good reason, not to mention that all of these countries are all significant economically as well.
Re:Those stats don't really mean much though
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I don't know of any major piece of legislation that is directly associated with John Kerry, despite him being in the Senate for what, 20 yeears. Yeah, a few minor pieces here and there, but nothing like what the other senator from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy, is particularly well known for (who even did some stuff jointly with Orrin Hatch... if that isn't bizzare or what). Things like McCain-Feingold or Taft-Hartly (two very famous pieces of legislation that are still being discussed) are examples of senators who have made a name for themselves by what they've done in Congress. I just don't see that with Kerry.
Kerry is on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and I havn't seen any substantive intelligence reform packages come from him. I mean, it is almost his primary duty in the Senate to come up with such proposals in high detail, as that is what his committee is all about. Other senators would have to Kerry just to get the bill put in through the committee hearings. Really.
Your comment about stem-cell research shows that you don't realize that even day-to-day issues of financing government must come from congressional authorizations. Things such as stem-cell research are mainly what the President will articulate as a policy goal of the executive department. In that case, bio-research was already approved for general cancer therapies and President Bush simply gave some ethical guidelines where previously there were none. That is precisely what the President should do, although congress can even then clearly change that policy decision by simply passing a new law.
And again here, since this is not an issue of appropriation, Kerry could introduce legslation dealing with that issue as well.
I'm just saying that most of what Kerry complains about is part of his current job duties as opposed to foreign policy decisions (which the Senate deals with only very lightly, and mainly as a body to ratify a treaty). That Kerry might have done something a little different than Bush in going into Iraq may be true, but even then since Kerry voted for the authorization of the use of force in Iraq, unless he is changing he tune again it shows that he would have sent US soldiers into Kuwait even if he were President. All that would have been different is the timing for the invasion and who would have been in control of Iraqi territory after the war. I fail to see much of a difference here.
IMHO under a President Gore (or hypothetically a President Kerry), I think the casulties in Iraq would have been considerably higher, and there would have been major terrorist incidents in the continental USA since 9/11 as well.
Re:Those stats don't really mean much though
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One thing that you ignore with that is by virtue of the Veto power of the U.S. President, any President (even if he/she were of the Green Party or the American Nazi Party) would control directly 1/6th of both houses of Congress. That is a larger block of votes in Congress than most lobbying groups could ever hope to get, and it is absolute. You don't even have to worry about deal making holding out because if the President says he will vote one way, that is it.
Still, all a U.S. President can do is to politely lobby somebody from Congress (usually their own party) to introduce legislation that is favorable to their viewpoint.
What is surprising about Kerry is that every single proposal that he could come up with could be sent to Congress directly for a vote (as he is a member of the Senate). When Kerry complains about the fact that all of his potential proposals are all theoretical, I might buy that if he were a governor. But as a Senator, he could at least submit any good idea (from his viewpoint) into a bill tomorrow if he really cared for it. If he is elected President, he might even have the opportunity to even sign the bill he wrote into law (often things like this take more than one session of Congress to complete). How come he hasn't done this (submitted proposals to Congress, even if they won't get approved by a Republican controled Congress)?
Re:Those stats don't really mean much though
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All I can say is simply: Amen.
There are a number of issues that ordinary Americans face on a day to day basis that are brought up in these elections.
All of this attention is also ignoring the fact that 33 Senators and all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives are also up for an election (many going for reelection). Also you got Governors, members of the state legislature, city coucil, and at least where I live several issues on the ballot that aren't even for political office but instead are new laws up for vote and changes to the state constitution.
There is absolutely no way that somebody in Portugual or Lithuania could know about all of those issues better that somebody who is physically living where the issue are being decided.
America doesn't really pick political parties but instead picks specific political leaders that happen to belong to some political parties (mainly for fundraising efforts and the ability to get assistance to put together a campaign).
Re:Those stats don't really mean much though
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Why should you get to vote for the leader of a country you are not in. I guess you are angry with the fact that the USA in general has a huge effect on world politics. Would having the 3rd largest national population of the world (just behind China and India) and the 4th largest land area have anything to do with that?
America is where America is because of historical reasons and in some cases pure luck and a lot of very hard work.
There isn't a "President of the World", and frankly I don't think the UN Secretary-General fills that role either. Until that happens, there isn't too much to complain about, or even moan about the gubinitorial elections of California or Texas, or who the new PM of the UK is. I don't live in any of those areas, but those elections also have a fairly direct impact on my own life.
Re:Rest of the world doesn't have free press
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The CIA gets blamed for so much that it is litterally impossible to seperate out fact from fiction when you are talking about what they are accused of.
While ordinary Americans may not know everything that the CIA does, when something serious does occur you had better believe that we do hear about it. The problem that you are mentioning is more a result of domestic politics in the USA trying to do something that corrupts the CIA.
Besides trying to act like James Bond, most of what the CIA does is more like journalists anyway, where they simply try to gather information and report it back to their boss. The some of the problem that the USA has had with Arab or indeed most Moslem nations is that there were no CIA employees in any of those countries that did something simple like gathering local newspapers and buying food in the local food markets to see what ordinary people thought of their government. That occasionally some James Bond type stuff does occur is true, but it is so rare that most CIA agents rarely if ever participate in such activities.
Please put away your tin hat in this case. It isn't quite as bad as you think.
Re:Rest of the world doesn't have free press
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Perhaps you think that the New York Times and USA Today constitute the entirety of the American Press? Or that Television news is considered reliable?
The fact is that any U.S. citizen can start their own news agency. Just look at Matt Drudge (regardless of what you think of his political viewpoint). What is interesting is that alternative media outlets are indeed where news is being distributed now within America, such as here with/. or AM Radio (and not all radio hosts are conservative either).
As far as the US media not interested in world affairs, I think there are a couple of things to consider. One, that life does exist outside of Europe (I know, a common misconception), and two, that the USA is a large enough country that most Americans hardly ever meet somebody from another country unless they are a tourist or an immigrant, with the possible exception of Canada and Mexico as common destinations for ordinary Americans.
I would also suggest that you look at the ratings and circulation figures for news outlets. Traditional newspaper circulation has been dropping in the USA for several decades now, which is why most American cities only have a single newspaper. Even television news programs like the CBS Evening News have been losing out to reruns of "The Simpsons" during the same time period. What I'm trying to say here is that what you are comparing for US media is losing ground and losing the attention of ordinary Americans in part because it is so awful. We (Americans) know it and are making it irrelevant.
What is so neat, and wasn't always so true even less than 100 years ago, was that a free press is historically a rather unusual thing. That you can point to several countries like Argentina and Chile where you would have been shot for critizing the leader of the respective countries even less than 50 years ago.
I will also say that if you look around the world and see the countries where freedom is prevalent, the former British colonies are actually in pretty good shape (Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa), while the former colonies of other countries, even the USA (like Cuba and the Phillipines or Liberia), are in worse shape. Truly awful are former French colonies (like Vietnam or much of Africa).
In fairness to the other faculty members (who are all outstanding IMHO... well most of them anyway) I think this is more a situation where the computer industry is becoming very specialized for some skill sets that you simply can't know everything.
This graphics course was a year-long series just for low-level computer graphics. Going through this course you could just about send off a resume to Pixar, Weta (or the rest of the CGI companies) and be able to work on their rendering engines. That is a big set of shoes to fill and something that the other faculty members simply didn't know enough about to be able to take over the course work. Trying to hire somebody specifically for that sort of specialty would simply bankrupt the CS department at the moment (maybe not now with the IT job market collapse, but specialties are still in demand even if general programmers aren't.)
The problem with that concept is that this slowing down has been noticed for several years, and is something that has happened well before hitting the heliopause.
One other very interesting scientific issue with the Voyager probes and with some of the Pioneer probes (like Pioneer 10) is that they have pushed back the limits of what was previously thought to be the heliopause.
I will conceed the point that the Voyager probes were considered to be very close to the Heliopause approaching what is presumed to be a "Helioshock", a region of charged particles that would be somewhat analogous to the Van Allen Belts around the Earth but surrounding the Sun and incredibly larger. Still, from the descriptions of the Helioshock I find it very difficult to believe that this relatively small region would significantly slow down the probes. I would be more inclined to believe that it would send electric current through the probe and shorting out the systems, but even then I find it unlikely. The expected jolt of electricity is going to be considerably less than the Van Allen belts of Jupiter and Saturn, which all of these probes flew through as well and was well documented in terms of its affects on the probes systems.
Keep in mind that we are talking interstellar space here, where you find atoms the size of your thumb because there is just nothing out there to keep electrons from shell 5000, even on ordinary hydrogen. It is really empty of just about anything you can pick at. If it ran into a comet while out there, all that would happen is that the transmission would suddenly end, and that is very unlikely. Hmmm.... maybe that is what happened?
You forget something here. Just as the "low countries" of the Rhine delta region (it is hard to come up with an exact phrase for this area of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxlemburg) have been kept independent due to the natural invasion route militarily between France, Germany, and England, Korea is the natural invasion route you would have to go between Japan and China (and Russia or at least Siberia if you throw in Manchuria, I might add).
If that doesn't spell trouble in the future, I don't know what else could, especially as all three are at each other's throat and the USA only makes Korea stable enough to allow them to act as a balance between these major political and military powers. Korea would be squashed like a bug if those three countries (Japan, China, and Russia) decided to go to war against each other.
Japan has been "protected" by the USA, and for the most part the current situation is more due to the "cold war" stalemate between China and Russia as allies against Japan and the USA on the other side, with the obvious demarkation of a border being the DMZ in Korea. I'm not sure what the current relations are between Russia and Japan (still not too cordial... they did fight a couple of wars against each other in the 20th Century) but having the USA withdraw would create a huge power vacuum there.
What is happening with North Korea and them getting nukes is more along the lines of Serbia throwing a fit because some Archduke was killed. It lit a match in a very dangerous situation that could turn real ugly in a real hurry. If you think the casulties in Iraq are bad now, just wait until we have 1000 U.S. casulties every day with a hot war in eastern Asia again.
I can't emphasis this enough, but you hit the nail on the head with this one.
The fact is that in the past (as recently as Y2K) a similar job would have had only 5-10 application submitted. The IT labor market is very tight at the moment in the USA, and if you know anything about computers (like have a CS degree), you have to jump immediately on anything if you want to remotely have a chance to get a job.
I also spent almost a year trying to run through the unemployment mill, and I was required to put out at least 3 resumes a week, with some weeks sending out resumes to people who absolutely didn't have openings that met my qualifications. In the past (and I know this from direct experience, and other stories as well) programmers would be hired simply if they knew a programming language of any kind at all. Indeed, back in the 1970's and earlier, all you had to have was a degree in statistics or mathamatics, not even computer science. Basically somebody who knew how to form a decent equation.
This even included most CS faculty at universities. A (just retired) professor of computer science I know had a PhD in Biology (as well as his undergraduate work), and became a CS professor simply because he somehow learned how to program in Fortran back elsewhen, and otherwise simply kept up with the computer industry the old fashion way by reading programming journals (like Dr. Dobbs or ACM journals) and kept up with the craft. Do you think he was unqualfied for his position? He ended up teaching computer graphics theory classes that have been discontinued at the university simply because there is no faculty member that is qualified to take his spot and teach the same subject.
I take it that the parent poster (NerveGas) would probabaly reject the resume from this professor if he wanted to suppliment his retirement check. Probabaly Dr. Kunth as well, from his attitude.
I've read many posts arguing that this is an awful proposal in so far as it will negate the influence of Colorado on the national scene.
I would argue that instead it would make it exactly the opposite. Colorado would always be a battle ground state, where even getting an extra 10% of the vote is useful, even if the candidate is significantly behind in the polls. Any candidate who would ignore Colorado after this ammendment were passed would be buried in Colorado.
Where this really helps is with 3rd party candidates, as has been remarked about earlier. Going off of the 2000 popular vote totals, I put them into a spreadsheet and calculated what the electorial vote totals should have been in Bush vs. Gore had all of the states used such a proportial voting system. Here are the final results:
Bush 263 electorial votes Gore 262 electorial votes Nader 13 electorial votes Buchanan 0 electorial votes
This would have put Ralph Nader into a really interesting position politically that the USA normally has never had to deal with in the past. That is a 3rd party that is able to significantly modify elections. It would also be interesting to see what the constitutionality would be if in the time between November and January when the electorial votes were cast if Nader could throw his support to Gore (hypothetically in this case) to keep this from going to the U.S. House of Representatives. Certainly Democrats would have been "forced" to deal with the Green Party and perhaps have to adopt some of its platforms. I wish I had the popular vote totals for 1992, as H. Ross Perot was an even larger influence on the popular vote than even Nader was in 2000.
These vote totals also show that yes, small states have a big influence (dispite the more total votes to Gore) even under such a system, but not quite as much as it would seem from the rural oligarchy opponents would have you believe.
One very interesting state was Alaska, where the votes for Bush would have only guarenteed a single electorial vote, and tie-breaking procedures would have been required for the other two votes, in part due to votes for Nader. Nader would have still needed more votes than Gore to get one of those electorial votes, but that is interesting in itself, where a major party is directly challenged by a 3rd Party.
This is a clear-cut case of where such a proportional system would have huge implications on the national scene. BTW, Nader would have recieved one electorial vote from Colorado if this proportional system were in place during the 2000 election. Far from a thrown away vote, it would have been a deciding factor for determing who would be President of the USA. It would have been Bush 4, Gore 3, and Nader 1 (Colorado had 8 electorial votes in 2000). Nader would have had 2 electorial votes from California.
Such a system like this, which can be implemented independently by the various state legislatures, really would have a profound impact on the American republic politically. The substantial increase in power by 3rd parties through such a system is perhaps the #1 reason why a system like this would not get widespread adoption, although individual states doing something like this certainly would see a huge increase in 3rd party campaigning. With that perhaps a real debate regarding policies and ideas for our country as well, and that by itself could also be a huge political draw as well for at least the first states that would adopt such a system.
Since I can find these stats, Utah in 1992 is even more interesting for the presidential election and five electorial votes. Electorial votes would have been devided like this:
It was supposed to be 70, but Baby Boomers in Congress started to complain, so a "compromise" was made.
This current formula was done to make some politcal hay in regards to the solvancy of the social security system, and push the big gloom and doom date back by another presidental term. BTW, this change did happen during the Clinton administration, so don't act so surprised. It is just that the popular news media didn't make that big of a deal about it, so it hasn't been on the front page of newspapers (or the leading story on TV news broadcasts). That they didn't touch current SS benefits or those who were retiring for a couple of years after the proposal was introduced also made it politically palatable.
They have a couple of different options, from a simple 3" piece of wire built right onto the board to a hi-gain Yagi or Omni-directional antenna, depending on your needs.
They didn't mention directly the kind of antenna, because that is usually something that would be decided by a customer when they have an actual application they would want to use it for. The default antenna works fairly well for testing and development purposes, and in many cases works just fine in the field as well. I would say that only when you start to have problems getting signal loss (resulting in corrupted bits) would you have to instead move to another kind of antenna, and even then it might be hopeless as well.
I've been a long-time customer of MaxStream, and as an application developer, I've used a previous version of this product in a practical industrial environment (arc welding equipment, tool stamping devices, secretaries using word processors, the works for what you would expect, and some RF noise that is more unusual than a typical industrial facility) and I got to about 1000 meters (yes 1 km) before I had more than 50% packet loss using a good packet checking algorithm. Line of sight (i.e. to the side of a mountain with the equipment) does indeed get up to about the 40 km mark.
If you want to use if for industrial applications (the typical application) or if you want to deal with wireless communication in the raw (where essentially you can design your own private protocol.... not necessarily a bad idea here as a hacker) this is a fun device to experiment. The FCC requirements are taken care of, and they even have modules that can be used in the EU that don't require any change in software, so you don't have to get a broadcaster's license to experiment with these devices.
There are also some different antenna schemes to use as well, but the little stub of an antenna will work just fine in most situations. BTW, the experiments I did by placing the transmission pairs in opposite sides of the manufacturing facility I was at used the default antenna. I know it can get better.
You need to add that the Democrats in congress, while somewhat supportive of Roosevelt, didn't want to break the tradition and encourage other political parties to do the same thing when they came to power, such as is the situation right now where Bush would in theory be able to do the same thing.
This is exactly what the Senate Republicans don't want to see happen when they become a minority party again (they know politcal tides do turn back and forth.
BTW, Roosevelt ended up appointing eight justices during his tenure as President, along with a Chief Justice (who was previously appointed by Calvin Cooledge).
I think the #1 problem that the Republicans are facing right now is the fact that the Filibuster is now just a mere procedural issue. If the debate form were enforced like it was done in the past with the Senate, they would effectively shut down the Senate until the appointments came up for a vote.
As a citizen, I wouldn't mind that the Senate would be shut down between now and mid-November (aka the elections). As the soldiers in Iraq run out of bullets and federal workers stop getting paychecks, it would be real nice to simply point to the Democrats and simply say "If you would just shut up and vote, we can move on to more important matters"
I think pure constituant political pressure would eventually come up and force the issue to be resolved, and keep the concept of a filibuster for exactly what it was meant to be: Something that you use in an extreame circumstance when you are in the minority on an issue but feel you want to make a major political point about, potentially getting others to agree with your or cementing the opinion of the opposition. The filibuster by the late Sen. Strom Thurmond back in the 1960's is still ledgendary, and the points he made were instrumental in keeping him in office back elsewhen, at least for his local constituants.
If this issue were really that important to the Democrats (I don't think it is), they would pull out all the stops and make it a fundimental strategy for their congressional campaigns for Senate and keep the filibuster going. I would also be incredibly impressed if John Kerry spent several hours a week on the floor of the Senate involved with such an issue with a major filibuster. As it currently stands, I doubt Kerry will even make it to the floor of the Senate to even vote against any of these judges.
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It just goes to show you that you need to learn local customs before you try to do something in a foreign country. It just so happens that lawyers are a part of the American culture, for good or ill. In all this you didn't even touch on conflicting state and local juristictional questions, not to mention overlapping oversight regarding what governmental agency is actually in charge (like the FCC trying to regulate spaceflight. Yes, I spelled FCC correctly, not FAA).
Many companies like Scaled Composites or Armadillo Aeropsace are formed in the USA, and truth be told, many of those restrictions you are complaining about are in place precisely to discourage foreign investment when local investors will do a good enough job. Most local communities are not looking for foreign investment anyway, and those who do usually get burned in the process.
While I'm sure if Paramount could if it were possible to formally trademark the phrase "U.S.S. Enterprise", since it is the name of an actual ship not owned by Paramount I think it would be more problematic for Paramount Pictures to be able to enforce that trademark.
The name "USS Enterprise" has a long and distinguished history going all the way back to the administration of George Washington. There isn't going to be judge in the USA that will seriously recognise trademark usage except by the U.S. Navy for that term. I think Richard Branson is very safe by using that name.
Being piloted by a Capt. James T. Kirk (or even Capt. Sulu) on the other hand....
I remember a story about old Soviet Russia where the KGB deliberatly messed up the maps of Moscow so "spies" wouldn't be able to get accurate information. This included everything from tourist maps to plaquards in the subway system. Everyday Moscovites would know where to go, and with the high level of security they couldn't simply wander around town too much anyway.
The ongoing joke in Moscow was that the best maps of the city were found in the American Embassy, which were commonly purchased by Taxi drivers.
I'd love some attribution to this story, and it seems unfortunate that the U.S. government is encouraging behavior more and more like the old Soviet government.
I have to point out that it is a Very Good Thing(tm) that even if you have a $25 million reward on your head that it is still possible to go somewhere in this world and tell the U.S. government to "go to hell".
Do you really want it to be possible not to evade the U.S. government if you really want to get outta Dodge? Do you want to have an organization, any group, so effecient that they really will know where you are and what you are doing 24/7/365/100 years?
Osama gives me some hope that at least in theory I could go somewhere and not have to worry about what the occupant of the White House is and what their opinion of me is.
This is not to say that I approve of Mr Bin Laden's actions. I really don't agree with them at all, nor his political views. This also shows just how big this world is, and that trying to track somebody down who is deleberately trying to hide is a very difficult proposition.
For all I know, Osama is somewhere in California growing marijuana to pass the time of day. At least it wouldn't surprise me if he were found in some remote wilderness area in California...or even Texas for that matter. What about Columbia or Peru? How certain are you that he is even in Southwest Asia?
No it wouldn't. It means they can maintain a nuclear power plant, which is a totally different beast. Besides, having nuclear bomb capabilities requires not just the plant, but being able to modify designs beyond normal international controls (i.e. refining and concentrating fissionable materials), and having a totally seperate security detail/military branch that is dedicated to housing, manitaining, and controlling the physical bombs themselves. That is even seperate from delevery systems, which I've pointed out are not trivial either, but are at least within the line of a normal military mission. North Korea at least has plenty of soldiers.
I'm just trying to point out that the possession of nuclear bombs is not a trivial thing, and even if the USA were to give a country like Granada or Trinidad & Tobago a nuke (thus making them technically a nuclear power), there is absolutely no way that either of those countries could possibly maintain the infrastructure necessary to keep them.
BTW, this isn't totally without precedence either. Kazakstan was for awhile after the collapse of the Soviet Union a nuclear power, and relished in the fact that they were in that unique status. They put a whole lot of effort into keeping the nukes under control that they had, and finally realized just how stinking expensive it was to maintain a nuclear arsenal. After some humming and hawing I think they gave them to Russia just to get them off their hands. Kazakstan still maintains nuclear power plants, and has the engineers necessary to maintain and potentially build new plants if necessary. I think that the Ukraine does maintain its leftover arsenal as well, but even they have scaled back their nuclear arms substantially from what they had immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I might also add that both Russia and America have cut back the number of nukes in their stockpiles, also in part because of the huge cost of simply maintaining them. Yes, the S.T.A.R.T. talks did orgainize a formal process for doing this, but if it weren't economically important to dismantel nukes this wouldn't have happened.
In short, I think North Korea could possibly build and maintain a couple (5-20 max) nuclear warheads, but doing so will essentially bankrupt their rather fragile economy as well. I know maintaining the nuclear arsenal in America isn't cheap, and America has the cash to burn. North Korea absolutely doesn't.
That is precisely what this site, from my view, is trying to imply. Also, in California there are some bills before the state legislature to grant the vote to illegal aliens, or even green card holders. I think this is an incredibly stupid idea, but even so, the concept is being thrown around.
I wasn't refering to stable missile systems in order to get a nuke somewhere. It can be carried by car, boat, plane, or even a backpacker (well, perhaps not on foot so much, but the Vietcong were able to transport MIG aircraft by foot over a dirt footpath, and a nuke wouldn't have been too much harder).
The trick is simply trying to maintain the nuke itself. That is what I question regarding North Korea. It requires a certain amount of national infrastructure in order to get that accomplished, which also takes several billion dollars (or the local currency equivalent) to do that. This is not something that Mr. Wm. H. Gates III could do if he sold all of his M$ stock at current market value. It takes people with even more money than that. Perhaps a multi-national conglomerate, but even that would be tough to pull off.
I think North Korea is right on the fiscal boundrary of being able to afford the systems to keep even a couple of nukes around. They won't be mass producing them any time soon, unless they plan on using them very soon as well.
I don't know what your source of information is, but according to the Indian government they have been a nuclear power since 1974. That jibes with my own recollections from when the tests were first publicly announced. That is, if I can do math correctly, over 30 years ago, not just 3 or 4 years ago. They tried to produce these weapons for even longer than that.
When the most recent round of negotiations between India and Pakistan broke down, there were people in both countries that felt they could survive an all-out nuclear war between each other. The people in key leadership positions however knew better and chose a more diplomatic route to resolve the issues.
What doesn't get mentioned in the whole nuclear arms debate is that there is a size limitation on what national resources it takes to maintain a nuclear arsenal. Building a nuke in the first place is somewhat difficult, but keeping them armed and available at a moment notice (the only real reason to have them as a deterant) is incredibly expensive. You really need the resources of a major nation to do that effectively. The current issue is mainly that some countries have figured out how to reduce that cost, and hence it is more affordable for more countries than it was in the 1950's.
Still, it takes more than a few people with PhD level of knowledge of nuclear physics that are also loyal to your government to even maintain a single nuclear bomb. Also not acknowledged is that there are a number of ways to trace nuclear bombs after they have been detonated. The country that supplied and manufactured a detonated nuclear bomb should be held financially, diplomatically, and militarily responsible for the results of its use. I think it would also be clear that any nation that used nukes would be an international parriah, even the USA. It could be argued that some nations are upset at the USA precisely because of that fact.
Iran is indeed large enough and has enough talented people that it can likely obatin nuclear weapons without any outside help. In the case of North Korea, between what the USA and China have both supplied with some very schrewd negotiations to keep those two countries from knowing their (North Korea's) real intentions have given them the infrastructure to build nukes. I'm not convinced though that North Korea can maintain them by getting new fissionable material, security safeguards (to keep themselves from getting wiped off the map if the nukes get misused), or even the delivery systems necessary to get the bombs where they need them the most (like Seoul in the case of North Korea). All of these costs substantially increase and even grow per bomb as you get more bombs, so an overall arms race ends up being self-defeating. In other words, there is no economy of scale on the production of nuclear bombs.
Terrorist groups would necessarily have to obtain nukes from a nation-state. Unlike RPG's or even plastic explosives, this is not something you can make in your basement for crude versions of these weapons. I would not want to be the country that supplied such a weapon.
On the other side of the equation, however, a terrorist group isn't so concerned about the security and maintainence aspects of nukes. The intention is to use it nearly immediately after it is built or obtained. The problem there, however, is that it is easiest to get nukes in places where nukes would be of little use, and transporting a nuke across international borders is going to get whomever is doing that capital punishment, even in anti-capital punishment countries like France or Germany. I would dare anybody, particularly a French citizen, to keep from tearing up anybody who brought a nuke into France without the French governments authorization. I would personally kill with my bare hands anybody who tried to bring a nuke into America, or donate to the defense fund of anybody who kills, maims, or disables anybody doing so on American soil.
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While an interest in the outcome of elections in the USA might be one thing, and certainly it is a big deal in regards to the actions of many other nations, an interest does not directly imply that you should have a vote.
In the case of New Zealand, I certainly hope that you are voting for your own parliment and choosing leaders who know when to give support to the USA (such as if Chinese troops land in California) and when to say "screw you" or some other more diplomatic phrase if the US President is telling you that the USA is going in to invade France again, this time to conquor the French Government and put in something in place more to the liking of the USA, and he is expecting to activate the ANZUS alliance over this invasion.
New Zealand is clearly an independent nation and does not have a direct stake in the outcome of the President of the USA. On the other hand, by my living in Utah, I do have to worry about what laws he signs and when the President sends my friends and co-worker to war (with hopfully the approval and declaration of the Senate...an important but seemingly forgotten safeguard even in the U.S. Senate).
BTW, as an American, I find that the selection of PM in England is of significance, and the popular news media here does indeed cover it, together with the selection of Presidents of Russia and France or even the Prime Minister of India. Whenever the head of state for a nuclear war power changes, it should be of concern to the rest of the world for a good reason, not to mention that all of these countries are all significant economically as well.
I don't know of any major piece of legislation that is directly associated with John Kerry, despite him being in the Senate for what, 20 yeears. Yeah, a few minor pieces here and there, but nothing like what the other senator from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy, is particularly well known for (who even did some stuff jointly with Orrin Hatch... if that isn't bizzare or what). Things like McCain-Feingold or Taft-Hartly (two very famous pieces of legislation that are still being discussed) are examples of senators who have made a name for themselves by what they've done in Congress. I just don't see that with Kerry.
Kerry is on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and I havn't seen any substantive intelligence reform packages come from him. I mean, it is almost his primary duty in the Senate to come up with such proposals in high detail, as that is what his committee is all about. Other senators would have to Kerry just to get the bill put in through the committee hearings. Really.
Your comment about stem-cell research shows that you don't realize that even day-to-day issues of financing government must come from congressional authorizations. Things such as stem-cell research are mainly what the President will articulate as a policy goal of the executive department. In that case, bio-research was already approved for general cancer therapies and President Bush simply gave some ethical guidelines where previously there were none. That is precisely what the President should do, although congress can even then clearly change that policy decision by simply passing a new law.
And again here, since this is not an issue of appropriation, Kerry could introduce legslation dealing with that issue as well.
I'm just saying that most of what Kerry complains about is part of his current job duties as opposed to foreign policy decisions (which the Senate deals with only very lightly, and mainly as a body to ratify a treaty). That Kerry might have done something a little different than Bush in going into Iraq may be true, but even then since Kerry voted for the authorization of the use of force in Iraq, unless he is changing he tune again it shows that he would have sent US soldiers into Kuwait even if he were President. All that would have been different is the timing for the invasion and who would have been in control of Iraqi territory after the war. I fail to see much of a difference here.
IMHO under a President Gore (or hypothetically a President Kerry), I think the casulties in Iraq would have been considerably higher, and there would have been major terrorist incidents in the continental USA since 9/11 as well.
One thing that you ignore with that is by virtue of the Veto power of the U.S. President, any President (even if he/she were of the Green Party or the American Nazi Party) would control directly 1/6th of both houses of Congress. That is a larger block of votes in Congress than most lobbying groups could ever hope to get, and it is absolute. You don't even have to worry about deal making holding out because if the President says he will vote one way, that is it.
Still, all a U.S. President can do is to politely lobby somebody from Congress (usually their own party) to introduce legislation that is favorable to their viewpoint.
What is surprising about Kerry is that every single proposal that he could come up with could be sent to Congress directly for a vote (as he is a member of the Senate). When Kerry complains about the fact that all of his potential proposals are all theoretical, I might buy that if he were a governor. But as a Senator, he could at least submit any good idea (from his viewpoint) into a bill tomorrow if he really cared for it. If he is elected President, he might even have the opportunity to even sign the bill he wrote into law (often things like this take more than one session of Congress to complete). How come he hasn't done this (submitted proposals to Congress, even if they won't get approved by a Republican controled Congress)?
All I can say is simply: Amen.
There are a number of issues that ordinary Americans face on a day to day basis that are brought up in these elections.
All of this attention is also ignoring the fact that 33 Senators and all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives are also up for an election (many going for reelection). Also you got Governors, members of the state legislature, city coucil, and at least where I live several issues on the ballot that aren't even for political office but instead are new laws up for vote and changes to the state constitution.
There is absolutely no way that somebody in Portugual or Lithuania could know about all of those issues better that somebody who is physically living where the issue are being decided.
America doesn't really pick political parties but instead picks specific political leaders that happen to belong to some political parties (mainly for fundraising efforts and the ability to get assistance to put together a campaign).
Why should you get to vote for the leader of a country you are not in. I guess you are angry with the fact that the USA in general has a huge effect on world politics. Would having the 3rd largest national population of the world (just behind China and India) and the 4th largest land area have anything to do with that?
America is where America is because of historical reasons and in some cases pure luck and a lot of very hard work.
There isn't a "President of the World", and frankly I don't think the UN Secretary-General fills that role either. Until that happens, there isn't too much to complain about, or even moan about the gubinitorial elections of California or Texas, or who the new PM of the UK is. I don't live in any of those areas, but those elections also have a fairly direct impact on my own life.
The CIA gets blamed for so much that it is litterally impossible to seperate out fact from fiction when you are talking about what they are accused of.
While ordinary Americans may not know everything that the CIA does, when something serious does occur you had better believe that we do hear about it. The problem that you are mentioning is more a result of domestic politics in the USA trying to do something that corrupts the CIA.
Besides trying to act like James Bond, most of what the CIA does is more like journalists anyway, where they simply try to gather information and report it back to their boss. The some of the problem that the USA has had with Arab or indeed most Moslem nations is that there were no CIA employees in any of those countries that did something simple like gathering local newspapers and buying food in the local food markets to see what ordinary people thought of their government. That occasionally some James Bond type stuff does occur is true, but it is so rare that most CIA agents rarely if ever participate in such activities.
Please put away your tin hat in this case. It isn't quite as bad as you think.
Perhaps you think that the New York Times and USA Today constitute the entirety of the American Press? Or that Television news is considered reliable?
/. or AM Radio (and not all radio hosts are conservative either).
The fact is that any U.S. citizen can start their own news agency. Just look at Matt Drudge (regardless of what you think of his political viewpoint). What is interesting is that alternative media outlets are indeed where news is being distributed now within America, such as here with
As far as the US media not interested in world affairs, I think there are a couple of things to consider. One, that life does exist outside of Europe (I know, a common misconception), and two, that the USA is a large enough country that most Americans hardly ever meet somebody from another country unless they are a tourist or an immigrant, with the possible exception of Canada and Mexico as common destinations for ordinary Americans.
I would also suggest that you look at the ratings and circulation figures for news outlets. Traditional newspaper circulation has been dropping in the USA for several decades now, which is why most American cities only have a single newspaper. Even television news programs like the CBS Evening News have been losing out to reruns of "The Simpsons" during the same time period. What I'm trying to say here is that what you are comparing for US media is losing ground and losing the attention of ordinary Americans in part because it is so awful. We (Americans) know it and are making it irrelevant.
What is so neat, and wasn't always so true even less than 100 years ago, was that a free press is historically a rather unusual thing. That you can point to several countries like Argentina and Chile where you would have been shot for critizing the leader of the respective countries even less than 50 years ago.
I will also say that if you look around the world and see the countries where freedom is prevalent, the former British colonies are actually in pretty good shape (Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa), while the former colonies of other countries, even the USA (like Cuba and the Phillipines or Liberia), are in worse shape. Truly awful are former French colonies (like Vietnam or much of Africa).
In fairness to the other faculty members (who are all outstanding IMHO... well most of them anyway) I think this is more a situation where the computer industry is becoming very specialized for some skill sets that you simply can't know everything.
This graphics course was a year-long series just for low-level computer graphics. Going through this course you could just about send off a resume to Pixar, Weta (or the rest of the CGI companies) and be able to work on their rendering engines. That is a big set of shoes to fill and something that the other faculty members simply didn't know enough about to be able to take over the course work. Trying to hire somebody specifically for that sort of specialty would simply bankrupt the CS department at the moment (maybe not now with the IT job market collapse, but specialties are still in demand even if general programmers aren't.)
The problem with that concept is that this slowing down has been noticed for several years, and is something that has happened well before hitting the heliopause.
One other very interesting scientific issue with the Voyager probes and with some of the Pioneer probes (like Pioneer 10) is that they have pushed back the limits of what was previously thought to be the heliopause.
I will conceed the point that the Voyager probes were considered to be very close to the Heliopause approaching what is presumed to be a "Helioshock", a region of charged particles that would be somewhat analogous to the Van Allen Belts around the Earth but surrounding the Sun and incredibly larger. Still, from the descriptions of the Helioshock I find it very difficult to believe that this relatively small region would significantly slow down the probes. I would be more inclined to believe that it would send electric current through the probe and shorting out the systems, but even then I find it unlikely. The expected jolt of electricity is going to be considerably less than the Van Allen belts of Jupiter and Saturn, which all of these probes flew through as well and was well documented in terms of its affects on the probes systems.
Keep in mind that we are talking interstellar space here, where you find atoms the size of your thumb because there is just nothing out there to keep electrons from shell 5000, even on ordinary hydrogen. It is really empty of just about anything you can pick at. If it ran into a comet while out there, all that would happen is that the transmission would suddenly end, and that is very unlikely. Hmmm.... maybe that is what happened?
You forget something here. Just as the "low countries" of the Rhine delta region (it is hard to come up with an exact phrase for this area of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxlemburg) have been kept independent due to the natural invasion route militarily between France, Germany, and England, Korea is the natural invasion route you would have to go between Japan and China (and Russia or at least Siberia if you throw in Manchuria, I might add).
If that doesn't spell trouble in the future, I don't know what else could, especially as all three are at each other's throat and the USA only makes Korea stable enough to allow them to act as a balance between these major political and military powers. Korea would be squashed like a bug if those three countries (Japan, China, and Russia) decided to go to war against each other.
Japan has been "protected" by the USA, and for the most part the current situation is more due to the "cold war" stalemate between China and Russia as allies against Japan and the USA on the other side, with the obvious demarkation of a border being the DMZ in Korea. I'm not sure what the current relations are between Russia and Japan (still not too cordial... they did fight a couple of wars against each other in the 20th Century) but having the USA withdraw would create a huge power vacuum there.
What is happening with North Korea and them getting nukes is more along the lines of Serbia throwing a fit because some Archduke was killed. It lit a match in a very dangerous situation that could turn real ugly in a real hurry. If you think the casulties in Iraq are bad now, just wait until we have 1000 U.S. casulties every day with a hot war in eastern Asia again.
I can't emphasis this enough, but you hit the nail on the head with this one.
The fact is that in the past (as recently as Y2K) a similar job would have had only 5-10 application submitted. The IT labor market is very tight at the moment in the USA, and if you know anything about computers (like have a CS degree), you have to jump immediately on anything if you want to remotely have a chance to get a job.
I also spent almost a year trying to run through the unemployment mill, and I was required to put out at least 3 resumes a week, with some weeks sending out resumes to people who absolutely didn't have openings that met my qualifications. In the past (and I know this from direct experience, and other stories as well) programmers would be hired simply if they knew a programming language of any kind at all. Indeed, back in the 1970's and earlier, all you had to have was a degree in statistics or mathamatics, not even computer science. Basically somebody who knew how to form a decent equation.
This even included most CS faculty at universities. A (just retired) professor of computer science I know had a PhD in Biology (as well as his undergraduate work), and became a CS professor simply because he somehow learned how to program in Fortran back elsewhen, and otherwise simply kept up with the computer industry the old fashion way by reading programming journals (like Dr. Dobbs or ACM journals) and kept up with the craft. Do you think he was unqualfied for his position? He ended up teaching computer graphics theory classes that have been discontinued at the university simply because there is no faculty member that is qualified to take his spot and teach the same subject.
I take it that the parent poster (NerveGas) would probabaly reject the resume from this professor if he wanted to suppliment his retirement check. Probabaly Dr. Kunth as well, from his attitude.
I've read many posts arguing that this is an awful proposal in so far as it will negate the influence of Colorado on the national scene.
I would argue that instead it would make it exactly the opposite. Colorado would always be a battle ground state, where even getting an extra 10% of the vote is useful, even if the candidate is significantly behind in the polls. Any candidate who would ignore Colorado after this ammendment were passed would be buried in Colorado.
Where this really helps is with 3rd party candidates, as has been remarked about earlier. Going off of the 2000 popular vote totals, I put them into a spreadsheet and calculated what the electorial vote totals should have been in Bush vs. Gore had all of the states used such a proportial voting system. Here are the final results:
Bush 263 electorial votes
Gore 262 electorial votes
Nader 13 electorial votes
Buchanan 0 electorial votes
This would have put Ralph Nader into a really interesting position politically that the USA normally has never had to deal with in the past. That is a 3rd party that is able to significantly modify elections. It would also be interesting to see what the constitutionality would be if in the time between November and January when the electorial votes were cast if Nader could throw his support to Gore (hypothetically in this case) to keep this from going to the U.S. House of Representatives. Certainly Democrats would have been "forced" to deal with the Green Party and perhaps have to adopt some of its platforms. I wish I had the popular vote totals for 1992, as H. Ross Perot was an even larger influence on the popular vote than even Nader was in 2000.
These vote totals also show that yes, small states have a big influence (dispite the more total votes to Gore) even under such a system, but not quite as much as it would seem from the rural oligarchy opponents would have you believe.
One very interesting state was Alaska, where the votes for Bush would have only guarenteed a single electorial vote, and tie-breaking procedures would have been required for the other two votes, in part due to votes for Nader. Nader would have still needed more votes than Gore to get one of those electorial votes, but that is interesting in itself, where a major party is directly challenged by a 3rd Party.
This is a clear-cut case of where such a proportional system would have huge implications on the national scene. BTW, Nader would have recieved one electorial vote from Colorado if this proportional system were in place during the 2000 election. Far from a thrown away vote, it would have been a deciding factor for determing who would be President of the USA. It would have been Bush 4, Gore 3, and Nader 1 (Colorado had 8 electorial votes in 2000). Nader would have had 2 electorial votes from California.
Such a system like this, which can be implemented independently by the various state legislatures, really would have a profound impact on the American republic politically. The substantial increase in power by 3rd parties through such a system is perhaps the #1 reason why a system like this would not get widespread adoption, although individual states doing something like this certainly would see a huge increase in 3rd party campaigning. With that perhaps a real debate regarding policies and ideas for our country as well, and that by itself could also be a huge political draw as well for at least the first states that would adopt such a system.
Since I can find these stats, Utah in 1992 is even more interesting for the presidential election and five electorial votes. Electorial votes would have been devided like this:
Bush (Sr.): 2 electorial votes
Clinton: 1 electorial vote
Perot: 2 electorial votes
Perot would have been a major political force in 1992. Another example of how this election would have a huge impact ad such a situation occured.
It was supposed to be 70, but Baby Boomers in Congress started to complain, so a "compromise" was made.
This current formula was done to make some politcal hay in regards to the solvancy of the social security system, and push the big gloom and doom date back by another presidental term. BTW, this change did happen during the Clinton administration, so don't act so surprised. It is just that the popular news media didn't make that big of a deal about it, so it hasn't been on the front page of newspapers (or the leading story on TV news broadcasts). That they didn't touch current SS benefits or those who were retiring for a couple of years after the proposal was introduced also made it politically palatable.
Please look at their product page
They have a couple of different options, from a simple 3" piece of wire built right onto the board to a hi-gain Yagi or Omni-directional antenna, depending on your needs.
They didn't mention directly the kind of antenna, because that is usually something that would be decided by a customer when they have an actual application they would want to use it for. The default antenna works fairly well for testing and development purposes, and in many cases works just fine in the field as well. I would say that only when you start to have problems getting signal loss (resulting in corrupted bits) would you have to instead move to another kind of antenna, and even then it might be hopeless as well.
I've been a long-time customer of MaxStream, and as an application developer, I've used a previous version of this product in a practical industrial environment (arc welding equipment, tool stamping devices, secretaries using word processors, the works for what you would expect, and some RF noise that is more unusual than a typical industrial facility) and I got to about 1000 meters (yes 1 km) before I had more than 50% packet loss using a good packet checking algorithm. Line of sight (i.e. to the side of a mountain with the equipment) does indeed get up to about the 40 km mark.
If you want to use if for industrial applications (the typical application) or if you want to deal with wireless communication in the raw (where essentially you can design your own private protocol.... not necessarily a bad idea here as a hacker) this is a fun device to experiment. The FCC requirements are taken care of, and they even have modules that can be used in the EU that don't require any change in software, so you don't have to get a broadcaster's license to experiment with these devices.
There are also some different antenna schemes to use as well, but the little stub of an antenna will work just fine in most situations. BTW, the experiments I did by placing the transmission pairs in opposite sides of the manufacturing facility I was at used the default antenna. I know it can get better.
You need to add that the Democrats in congress, while somewhat supportive of Roosevelt, didn't want to break the tradition and encourage other political parties to do the same thing when they came to power, such as is the situation right now where Bush would in theory be able to do the same thing.
This is exactly what the Senate Republicans don't want to see happen when they become a minority party again (they know politcal tides do turn back and forth.
BTW, Roosevelt ended up appointing eight justices during his tenure as President, along with a Chief Justice (who was previously appointed by Calvin Cooledge).
I think the #1 problem that the Republicans are facing right now is the fact that the Filibuster is now just a mere procedural issue. If the debate form were enforced like it was done in the past with the Senate, they would effectively shut down the Senate until the appointments came up for a vote.
As a citizen, I wouldn't mind that the Senate would be shut down between now and mid-November (aka the elections). As the soldiers in Iraq run out of bullets and federal workers stop getting paychecks, it would be real nice to simply point to the Democrats and simply say "If you would just shut up and vote, we can move on to more important matters"
I think pure constituant political pressure would eventually come up and force the issue to be resolved, and keep the concept of a filibuster for exactly what it was meant to be: Something that you use in an extreame circumstance when you are in the minority on an issue but feel you want to make a major political point about, potentially getting others to agree with your or cementing the opinion of the opposition. The filibuster by the late Sen. Strom Thurmond back in the 1960's is still ledgendary, and the points he made were instrumental in keeping him in office back elsewhen, at least for his local constituants.
If this issue were really that important to the Democrats (I don't think it is), they would pull out all the stops and make it a fundimental strategy for their congressional campaigns for Senate and keep the filibuster going. I would also be incredibly impressed if John Kerry spent several hours a week on the floor of the Senate involved with such an issue with a major filibuster. As it currently stands, I doubt Kerry will even make it to the floor of the Senate to even vote against any of these judges.