There is a reason why this particular ship's captain is being charged with multiple counts of manslaughter... and I think not only will those charges likely stick but that his conviction is all but assured given what I've seen and read about. That is far more of a condemnation than simply being said that they aren't a hero.
"Showboating"? He put the lives of a great many people into very real danger as a result of his deliberate orders and actions where he displayed not only a lack of fiduciary responsibility over his ship but also a lack of even remorse over the danger that he put his own crew and chartered passengers into. Simply put, he displayed no sense of responsibility for his actions.... a responsibility that he assumed when he accepted the position of captain. There is a reason why a ship's captain wears the extra stripes, has orders that are followed, and gets higher pay as well as some other posh perks (including apparently his choice of crew to share his bed at night based on several stories being circulated): when the proverbial stuff hits the fan it is his job to make the hard choices and that he needs to be consulted when any problem comes up.
In any navy or maritime service, having a ship run aground is always rationale to relief the captain and possibly press charges against that person. It goes with the job. They are responsible for everything that happens even if they weren't the one who was directly at the helm or even the "officer of the watch" on duty at the time. The captain "owns" the ship because in turn the ship "owns" the captain. Anything and I mean anything that happens on the ship, in the ship, or to the ship by definition is the captain's responsibility to deal with and make sure nothing awful happens.
If a screw-up happens because a crew members either doesn't or refuses to follow orders of the captain, it is up to the captain to discipline that crew member either himself or through his subordinates, and to know who in his command he (or she) can depend upon to have those orders followed. Just because this was a civilian cruise ship rather than a military vessel doesn't make that chain of command and line of responsibility any less important. If anything because it was a civilian ship with civilian passengers the responsibility of the captain is even more critical.
More importantly, if the reports are correct about this ship, it was his orders that had the ship moving so close to shore, and he took a very relaxed attitude toward crew and passenger safety. In this case in particular, he might as well have been the person actually at the helm "single handedly running the ship" as he had multiple opportunities to avoid the fiasco that actually unfolded. As if running the ship aground wasn't bad enough, his actions after the incident were pathetic and are cause for increased scorn. This guy wanted the perks, but none of the responsibilities.
At least the captain of the Titanic took it like a man and tried to organize chaos to ensure the safety of his crew and passengers even if he failed ultimately. That captain also went down with his ship. This particular captain of the Costa Concordia didn't even have the guts to do that and certainly didn't put the safety of his passengers above his own.
Co-founder of Nupedia you should add. Wikipedia was an afterthought for people who were too impatient to get an article through the Byzantine process of getting a Nupedia article created. The funny thing is that the free-for-all process of article creation at Wikipedia ended up becoming by far and away better quality than the structured academic process that Nupedia set up.
On the positive side, Jimbo Wales did add some of the initial content to Wikipedia oh so many years ago, not that he should necessarily be proud of those contribution. This "new article" certainly seems a bit odd for an example of a quality article. There were other edits done earlier, but the software on Wikipedia had some corruption of the edit history and some of those edits were lost even though the content has been preserved.
Predictions about states breaking off, particularly California, have been made since the beginning of the American Republic. This is nothing new. The reasons for such a break-off are surprisingly unchanged, yet California has remained a U.S. State for more than a century since that original prediction was made.
Yeah, I think these guys need to read history first, and learn a bit more about the topic they are pontificating about.
Members of congress like to replace one complicated mess of laws with an even more complicated set of laws that satisfies some lobbyist group or another. I think that can be done with Einstein's equations quite nicely, as BP and AT&T wouldn't mind a petty little thing like the constant for the speed of light to be modified in some way to improve their profits.
I could split hairs with you, since most of the leading physical science journals simply reject any sort of submission of LENR out of hand when it is presented in the first place. There are some "journals" that cater to the LENR crowd (usually called a "fringe journal" by some) that do have disclosures of running cold fusion devices. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons also claimed to have had a functioning device at the University of Utah, as well as Dr. Steven Jones at Brigham Young University (who used a neutron counter for measurements instead of a calorimeter). The paper in question by Pons and Fleishmann was published in Nature. As to if you accept the results of that paper or if you think it really was a working device, that is your problem and not mine. There are other claimed devices, but I'll admit the science is quite weak and there is legitimate room for skepticism as to if the concept is even valid.
As to if a functioning device could have "net energy gain", much less something that could produce commercially useful amounts of power, I also have my deep doubts about the idea. If anything, I am increasingly convinced that Andrea Rossi is nothing more than a charlatan trying to dupe people into buying a box with a bunch of pinball machine parts.
If you want to see an amazing video to show to "true believers" of the eCat, I highly recommend this amazing video of a "fusion device" purchased at IKEA:
Seriously, you need to see this video after watching one of Rossi's numerous demonstrations, or at least show this to people who have been freshly exposed to the eCat concept. True believers will leave insulted, but it does put things in perspective.
Why would it not scale very well? The question here is more along the lines of why doesn't the end-customers simply take 100 or more of the "home units" and link them together?
Indeed, if you saw any of the videos being produced about the 1 MW plants being built, they are really just a series of much smaller units linked together in parallel rather than one massive reactor vessel. Why Rossi is suddenly claiming the 1 MW reactors is something different after claiming that it was "proof" of his technology is something that makes me even more skeptical of what is going on.
I just don't get it. Then again, perhaps this whole thing is just a bunch of BS from a talented con artist, in which case it shouldn't ever make sense.
The problem is that you still aren't going to be saving that much petroleum with this device if the costs to operate it not to mention the materials used to make it need to have petroleum based fuels (or other fossil fuels like coal and natural gas) being used to extract the Nickle or other materials being used to build the device.
If you are living "off the grid" and far from a more traditional power source, there still is solar cells and perhaps even a Diesel or gasoline generator to work with that are competing in theory with this device. Perhaps the e-cat could be competitive in price, and I'll admit that the price per kWh with those "off grid" generation methods can be as much as $1/kWh. No, the cost wouldn't shock me at all.
From the way you have written your post, I presume you care about the environmental consequences of energy production, and that is one thing that the e-Cat promoter are completely glossing over. Even if all of the fantastic claims about this device work out for the best and we can create electricity at $0.00001/kWh, I fear that it will lead to genuine global warming in a way that would put to shame anything being done with petroleum based energy production. With energy this cheap, you will see swimming pools being operated year round even in cold climates, people installing devices to thaw sidewalks, driveways, and parking lots for big box stores that keep melting snow, and in general a heat bubble coming out of larger cities the likes of which we have never seen before if for no other reason than energy will be cheap. Home will stop being insulated, and the very notion of energy efficiency will go completely out the window.
I have my current doubts about "global warming" and in particular "anthroprogenic global warming" as a significant factor around the globe right now, but e-Cats would completely clinch the argument for me and convince me that mankind is destroying this planet for once and for all. Energy that cheap would allow some Siberian cities to keep their rivers thawed out year-round and even deliberately deploying them to melt part of the Arctic Ocean. Yeah, that does real wonders for global climate change.
I was trying to be generous to the guy here. I may have missed a "demonstration" or two but I have never heard of him actually running one of these devices for more than a week. I've also done a rather generous survey of a great many of the "LENR devices" just trying to see what anybody else is doing, and if you even accept the fact that LENR/Cold Fusion is a real realm of scientific inquiry (I understand the hardcore skeptics) one of the persistent problems that seems to be in the field is the ability to keep the things running once you have them going. Typical in a LENR laboratory there are reports of fusion cells running for a few weeks and at most about a month or so, and those are reported as major success stories. For a home energy cell, that would piss off an ordinary consumer.
In other words, even in the realm of Cold Fusion, Rossi seems to be almost a nut job and doing stuff that is fantastic. That is saying a whole lot that ought to be raising red flags even on itself. This "breakthrough" is doing stuff that even people taking LENR seriously don't seem to be able to accomplish after decades of research. While Rossi is claiming all sorts of stuff about what his e-cat could be doing, his breakthroughs seem to be even more on the fantastic and he hasn't even put an upper limit on how long one of his cells is going to be working, or even acknowledging that it might be an issue at all.
This might be an interesting scientific curiosity, and if it is then there certainly is room to tinker in a lab and perhaps even have a "home fusion" kit that you can buy for an elementary school science fair. I think if I had a kid seriously interested in doing that, I would encourage them to instead invest in a Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor device than one of Rossi's fusion cells, as the science involved is a lot more clear and looking at a Fusor going into "star mode" is just stinking cool. An e-cat cell might as well be a kettle on a hot plate.
Le'ts think that through a little bit more. Rossi just "announced" how his "1 MW" reactor is now going to be sold for the low, low price of $1.5 million (from the previous $2 M he has been supposedly selling them for). For the sake of argument here, let's say that this reactor technology can scale down to a home generator plant for 10kW at a proportional price, which would give you a $15,000 home unit instead of the $1500 one that you think you are going to get. BTW, this is the only thing that Rossi is actually selling at the moment, or at least claiming to sell and the rest if a pipe dream. Perhaps "economies of scale" can help reduce manufacturing costs, but that is the only hard data point I have at the moment. Rossi claims it could get as cheap as $50 per kilowatt, but that sounds more like a con man talking than something real. I will grant the upper price limit of about $20k for a 10kW unit, and if you want to put the lower price limit at $1500, I'll buy that as reasonable.
On top of that, there has been absolutely no discussion as to what "ongoing" expenses there might be to actually operate this device. Even from Rossi's own accounts and from people "in the know" that have successful devices running cold fusion, the longest I've heard of one of those devices working is about a week or so, perhaps a month on the outside. I'll give the benefit of the doubt that Rossi has made a substantial breakthrough and made a device that will work non-stop for about a year (considered a miracle even among the true believers in cold fusion), I still don't see how this is going to make it to ten years. Keep in mind even all of the "demonstrations" that Rossi has done only lasted 24 hours, perhaps two days at most. He has yet to set up a device running for several weeks at a time, if only on a web cam as a "demonstration" that could easily be faked as well. It is a stretch, but I would put ten years as the hard absolute limit of operation before the device needs to be refurbished even if it works exactly as Rossi claims (which I have my serious doubts).
Even with all of this, there seems to be some sort of power requirement necessary to keep the reactor sustained (at least if you even think this device works at all). The most common way to deliver that energy is through electricity, where you can leverage the power consumed by the device by some ratio of energy input to energy being produced. Keep in mind that the power rating that Rossi is claiming is heat being produced by the devices and not electricity, noting that there will be some energy conversion costs transforming that heat into electricity. Here is also where the fuzzy details of how the device really works make a real problem trying to nail down prices. With the demonstration last October with his 1 MW plant, he had a 100 kW diesel generator sitting beside his "power plant" that was running during the demonstration. There was a "self-sustaining" mode, but my point here is pointing out that there is only some leveraging going on of the electricity input, and that a continuous power supply is necessary to make the thing work.
Sure, your "home energy unit" might be producing 10 kW of heat, but it sure won't be producing 10kW of electricity. I really am not convinced that if you had two of these units both connected to hyper efficient turbines producing electricity with some thermocouples trying to pick up some of the last watts generated before the waste heat finally has to be vented that they will even be able to power each other. For the sake of argument here, let's just presume that there still is an energy gain of some sort (wishful thinking even if Rossi is correct) and that you also don't need an air conditioner to keep the reactor room cool enough to operate if it is in a warm climate (further reducing efficiency). The question comes up therefore what is the ratio of energy input into a unit vs. how much is actually produced. Another variable is the efficiency of the turbines available that can be scaled to a home energy uni
If you are so stinking worried that North Korea, Iran, "The Taliban", Irish Republican Army, Ku Klux Klan, Symbionese Liberation Army, Deseret Liberation Organization, Martian Frontier Front, or any other group of would-be idiots who may have some intelligence to understand the basic principles of physics on their own, you need to convince your local congressmen that the laws of physics need to be repealed and modified so only friendly governments could ever discover those laws on their own. Something like legally making pi equal to exactly 3.12 instead of the more traditionally accepted irrational number. Legislators have that authority and ability, don't they?
If you know anything about nuclear physics in general and about how cold fusion is even claimed to be working, you might even wish that these kind of nut jobs spend all of their resources, time, and energy into developing cold fusion if for no other reason than it is a wonder way to keep people spinning their wheels doing something that will never be productive or useful. Sort of like how the Allied High Command in World War II kept bombing "ball bearing factories" and "heavy water factories" even though both were sort of pointless other than as a way to throw off potential researchers thinking there was something significant there.
I suppose you could make a bomb out of cold fusion devices. You can also make a bomb more successfully out of a gallon of gasoline or 190 proof alcohol. You don't need an advanced degree in nuclear physics to figure out how to make something that will kill somebody else. You can also make a bomb out of chicken poop, some grass clippings, and burning down part of a tree if you have some patience. Those who are so worried about the potential of somebody else doing harm are likely going to harm themselves in the process. Does that imply we need to control the sale of eggs, wheat, and acorns as those might be considered potential munitions?
The sad thing is that this kind of thinking how perhaps you can stop this line of research is a common type of government policy at the moment. It is also important to note it will stop more legitimate scientific progress in a great many other areas, and more significantly by stopping that kind of scientific inquiry it is going to keep more people in a state of poverty and ruin far more lives because that research is being stopped than would be the case if people simply are granted liberty to act as their own agents. Outlawing research also has a way of biting you back as it even encourages the research to be done... by the kind of people who would deliberately use it for malicious purposes.
More generally, I am not worried at all about Andrea Rossi with what he has developed, regardless of if he has a working device that actually produces energy or if it is a bunch of tea kettles in one of the most brilliant con games in history. Well, almost the greatest, he still hasn't been able to beat Bernie Madoff yet.
Actually, I think Code Academy does a pretty good job of explaining the why part. Most of the lessons are getting your hands dirty and actually coding stuff rather than a dry textbook sort of explanation, where you are encouraged to experiment and do variations of the coding as you are developing the example software.
What annoys me with the for loop in particular is that they really don't go over the syntax in a manner sufficient for beginners as it is a very complex structure. The "C" for loop (which Javascript also uses) is exceedingly complex for a beginning student. You can give a quick prototype to gloss over all of the things it does to simply get stuff to happen, but IMHO the depth of coverage currently in the lessons is far too shallow.
BTW, this gets back to their licensing model, where they are not open to new content from people who really understand the concepts and assuming that one or two people are the font of all possible knowledge on the topic. There are many people would wouldn't mind contributing a better way to teach some of the concepts, but the site isn't equipped to accept those contributors.
I have been largely self-taught in terms of the art of computer programming, but I will acknowledge that it is an acquired skill that doesn't come easy and took considerable time to actually learn. I have also taken formal software engineering courses at a university (as well as the usual programming classes) in part because I acknowledge that there were gaps in my education along the way that needed to be filled in.
I have had supervisors and even CEOs who dabbled a little bit with code, where they knew enough "to be dangerous". On the positive side, those in a supervisory position over software developers and working on the management side having real knowledge of how to develop software on even a simple level is usually better than somebody who is completely ignorant of computers... at least in terms of trying to explain why you might be behind schedule or how difficult it is to kill a bug. On the other hand, if they've never developed software more complex than a couple hundred lines of code, they have no clue how complex interactions between parts can be or how hard it is to try and fix the problems that a co-worker (or worse yet, a former co-worker) caused due to simply being sloppy and taking shortcuts in the development process that you now have to fix. Just as bad, trying to explain to those who know a little bit of software development that you can't jump right in and start coding on day one of a new project, or that any such software developed that first week is likely going to need to be thrown out afterward.
The worst is a half-way decent prototype created by the boss that you are told to "fix" and make it into a workable product. If you are lucky, you get to scrap the whole thing and start over with a clean sheet, but I've had to "add functionality" to a rough prototype all the time working around the kludge that a boss developed previously and try not to bruise their ego so bad by throwing stuff out, acknowledging that they are the boss and can fire your ass if you cut too deeply.
While I like what Code Academy is doing, I do not like their terms of service ("we own everything you do, including the software you write in these lessons and can exploit this mercilessly at our discretion without even giving you attribution. If you design a lesson for us, we own it and you automatically give us copyright and intellectual property rights without renumeration or even acknowledgement.") They also plan on charging visitors to their site eventually, so expect a "bait and switch" if you get into it.
On top of that, what they have is useful for about the equivalent of the first week or so in an introductory computer science class. It is useful to get started and to "wet your feet", but by the time you are through all you can do is roughly the equivalent of writing a "Hello World" in Javascript.
It looks like they are planning on taking it much further, so I do reserve judgement on the rest of what they are going to do, and apparently they have several series of lessons in the wings that they are planning on releasing about one each week through the rest of the year, at least if I can read between the lines. It could be useful though.
The Libertarian and Constitution Parties routinely get ballot access and are recognized in nearly all 50 states. I don't buy that as a legitimate excuse other than for somebody starting up a brand new philosophy from scratch that is completely separate.
I agree that ballot access is tough, and it takes coordination to pull off that access, but it isn't impossible. The problem is that the 3rd parties, once they get that ballot access, don't really do much with that access other than thump their chests and act as spoilers by siphoning off votes from one of the major parties in close contests.
It could be argued that it is the election district method of representation where there is but one representative for a given geographic area (two for the U.S. Senate, but those are almost always for separate years when they are up for election). I'm not so sure about that either as the United Kingdom has a similar system for representation in Parliament yet they are able to support multiple political parties. By far and away it is simply getting the bucks together to put together a credible campaign, or simply organizing enough people who might support a given candidate to counter the massive campaign budgets with volunteer labor. Either way, 3rd party groups simply don't seem to get the job done and close the circle in America.
Explain how "the voting system is rigged", then it might help to address the issue a bit better.
I think one of the worst aspects is how political parties are guaranteed a line on the general election ballot in most states for every office up for contest. If a political party was strictly about fundraising and promoting candidates of a particular philosophy rather than even being recognized at all on an official basis in elections, it would make a much better election process.
In other words, have primaries or as you are suggesting something like IRV or Condorcet voting (both have strengths and weaknesses) that were agnostic towards political parties, I think it would make for much cleaner elections. I do support some sort of primary process, where you could weed down the candidates and then put forward two, three, possibly even four candidates that showed some sort of viability (like getting at least 10% of the vote in the primary) who then in turn have a relatively short period of time (a couple of months or so) to "get their message out" for a final election. If all of the candidates would be of the same party, why would it matter?
Sadly, the only real party that matters in America isn't even the two major parties, but rather the "Incumbent Party", that wins more than 90% of the time, regardless of professed philosophical beliefs.
The way that the election laws are written, there isn't anything specific about political parties receiving funding, although there is "matching funding" that is leveraged by the major parties. It is also used by minor parties, as I know the Reform, Libertarian, and Constitution parties have all received at least some federal funding in the past. The problem is that you have to raise money in the first place to get the money, and the major parties are pretty good at finding donors to get the initial pot of money together.
I'd agree though that federal funding of presidential elections is a total joke and only makes the system worse. It also puts handcuffs on speech and election practices in general for which I would assert the 1st amendment ought to prohibit such activities, but courts and the U.S. Congress rarely care about pesky things like the Constitution as being relevant except when they are on the campaign trail speaking.
Usually there is at least somebody, somewhere, that wants to "fly the flag" even against an incumbent president of the same party, with the supposed hope that maybe in the next election cycle they would be the heir apparent and get the nomination the next time around. John McCain comes to mind when he ran against George W. Bush in 2004, and even Ted Kennedy running against Jimmy Carter in 1980. They may not get many votes or delegates, but they at least show up to the table and try. There is also the election of 1968 where the incumbent President didn't even bother trying to run himself (even though he constitutionally could) in part because of the Vietnam War and his perceived unpopularity.on top of some health issues that made him also want to "retire". Going back to 1956, Dwight Eisenhower even had challengers that showed up.
The surprising thing about the Democratic Party this time around is that absolutely nobody of any consequence is even bothering to try. Assuming Obama is re-elected, there will be an election in 2016 that will be of importance as Obama will be constitutionally prohibited from running again. Looking at the field, there isn't even somebody waiting in the wings "just in case" something happens to Obama over the next several months before the election. There is one strange guy in Miami Beach, Florida that claims to have raised $5 million to mount a campaign against Obama, but I have my doubts and the guy has some really weird things said about him when I do a quick Google search (Raphael Herman.... I just don't even know what to think of the guy). Even Bill Clinton at least had token opposition.
My point here is that historically there is at least somebody running in opposition, even if they are an incumbent President with widespread popular appeal. In this case, Obama seems to be very divisive even though I'll openly admit he does have a strong support base. It just seems odd that beyond some very genuine nut cases (raising money in the thousands of dollars range, combined less than $100k) is even trying to mount a campaign against Obama at all.
There is nothing legally or constitutionally prohibiting another political party from forming in America. Indeed there are several other would-be political parties that routinely get votes and even hold conventions and at least pretend to be competing against the major two.
The problem is really one of money and people willing to support those parties.
This said, I would have to agree with you that some of the legal mechanisms that keep the major parties entrenched into their position and keep other minor parties from getting accepted is a tragedy and something that ought to be fixed in some fashion. Something even as mundane as proportional allocation of electoral votes (tried in Colorado, and the voters failed to pass the referendum question) would go a long way to helping support 3rd parties being recognized as a legitimate political force. Or more importantly simply winning some seats somewhere, even if it isn't everywhere (like the Libertarians are trying to do with the Free State Project).
There are valiant attempts to go beyond the two major parties, but it takes people doing something about it rather than constantly bitching that they need to go. You also have to be very creative in terms of working within the system as you need to be aware that the deck is stacked against you.
H. Ross Perot had a real chance to make a real difference, had he not flaked out so awfully. If some billionaire or even a not so terribly huge group of multi-millionaires got together and wanted to make a real challenge to the status quo, I'm pretty certain they could make it work. Or perhaps if a group of more ordinary folks got together and put together a genuine populist movement (Occupy Wall Street actually getting organized in some fashion?) they a true competitive 3rd party could form. The sad thing is that most of the 3rd party groups want to remain 3rd party groups and aren't focused on actually winning elections instead of spreading their political message. That takes a whole lot of work, organization, and effort.
The R's and the D's are truly just 2 arms of the same beast. They both survive only due to blaming the other camp for all of the problems in the world.
If you want to see what I think very well may be an exhaustive list of literally every person running for President of the United States in 2012, I think this site may have it, together with what contact information is available for each of the candidates:
It really is an exhaustive list, including would-be challengers to Barack Obama for the Democratic Party nomination and a host of 3rd party candidates as well. I will promise you that in this list is a candidate you have never heard about, or even a political party that you've never heard about as well. As to if anybody but the "R" or "D" actually has a realistic chance to get the office is another story, but there is some very real diversity in this group if you want to do something more than cast a vote for the same old, same old.
Some candidates that really stood out for me in this list was Brian J. Moran of Texas running as the "Jedi Knight Candidate", Caesar St Augustine de Buonaparte running for the "Absolute Dictator Party" nomination, and Anthony Ray "Tony" Smitherman running for the "After Party" nomination.
Reading this list is at least good for a laugh or two, as I can't believe all of these folks are seriously considering that they are going to run for this office. It makes me wonder where the Pirate Party candidates are at, as that is one political party that I see missing in action.
When the Kodak Brownie was introduced, yes, you could say that was their business model. It was successful for a great many decades too and Kodak made a pile of money off of that effort. They consumed so much silver for the production of their film that they even owned silver mines with much of the silver processed there was simply going to their own factories rather than being used for bullion or coins.
That said, Kodak also was instrumental in developing the digital camera, invented the *.psd image format (still by far the best quality image format you can get in terms of the dynamic range of colors you can record for any computer imaging data format) and put in the engineering effort to try and change with the times.
The sad thing is that this isn't the only photo equipment company which has suffered in terms of being relevant or even totally collapsed. The Polaroid Corporation was once a rather large company too, and now is only a marketing brand for Chinese knock-off cameras where the company itself doesn't even exist at all any more. If you look at Fujifilm, once a major competitor to Kodak, they are also struggling under the same kinds of problems and fighting for relevancy.
All told, it really is a shift of technology on to of a shift in business models that are required to be successful. Then again Xerox had a similar kind of problem trying to stay relevant over the years, where it could have owned the PC market with the devices built at their PARC research group but instead let Apple Computer (in the form of Steve Jobs) essentially copy all of their ideas and build the Macintosh.
I graduated from high school in '83 and there was no shortage of schools which offered computer science programs a the time, although admittedly many of the departments were relatively new at the time.
I took some time off to experience life and went back to school in the early 1990's where I know a separate Computer Engineering program was being created at the engineering college at the university I was attending, and there were four different majors offered at four different colleges that had a substantial amount of computer programming as a part of the curriculum. Computer Science (College of Science), Information Technology (Business College), Instructional Technology (Education College), and then an applied engineering major through the Engineering College (I can't remember the name.... but it did involve substantial programming). While I think that was a bit overboard for that many majors at the same university related to computer technology, it shows that at least by that time such majors were quite well established.
My father took a class in FORTRAN in the early 1960's (I think it was 1962) at Brigham Young University. Yes, it was quite early and the computing equipment was quite primitive, but it was something being taught at the time. He later told me about it because he complained about how some of the students would mess up his software because they dared to touch some of the equipment inside of the computer, and how some of the tubes in that computer (yes, tubes, not even transistors) even had a water-cooled heat dissipation system built with a pump inside of the component. He took the class as a part of a nuclear engineering program he was involved with at the time.
The strange thing was that he didn't ever really use the language outside of that one class until about 20 years later when he got an odd sort of slide project computer for a completely unrelated field (he became a photographer instead of completing the nuclear engineering program).
Yes, I know that computer programming classes were quite rare at the time and that most universities didn't even have computer science majors until at least the 1970s, but classes were offered at some schools much earlier. One of my best computer science professors had a PhD in Biology, in part because the CS department was desperate for anybody with programming experience.
How that made things more reasonable is beyond me. Yes, some variants of COBOL do allow more ordinary mathematical expressions like you would see in C++ or even FORTRAN, but this is a "feature" of COBOL that has always seemed a little off.
Not only that, but since processing out of contry cheques is significantly more expensive, international donations would basically dry up - international postage and inability to cash the donations.
The ace in the hole for the WMF in this situation is that they have local, autonomous chapters located in a great many countries that already are receiving donations for WMF activities in those countries. It would take much more than Visa, Mastercard, or even "the international banking system" to shut down all fundraising activities without some sort of series of raw laws that explicitly prohibit the WMF and Wikimedia projects from operating... sort of like how China keeps trying to shut down zh.wikipedia.
Far from drying up donations from "international donors", I think it would thrive and would become very well organized, with the money flowing from non-American sources easier than even within America. Heck, I think there could even be volunteers who would be willing to come to your home to pick up a donation if you didn't want to bother with a stamp. The volunteer community within Wikimedia projects is a bit better organized than you think.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a reason why this particular ship's captain is being charged with multiple counts of manslaughter... and I think not only will those charges likely stick but that his conviction is all but assured given what I've seen and read about. That is far more of a condemnation than simply being said that they aren't a hero.
"Showboating"? He put the lives of a great many people into very real danger as a result of his deliberate orders and actions where he displayed not only a lack of fiduciary responsibility over his ship but also a lack of even remorse over the danger that he put his own crew and chartered passengers into. Simply put, he displayed no sense of responsibility for his actions.... a responsibility that he assumed when he accepted the position of captain. There is a reason why a ship's captain wears the extra stripes, has orders that are followed, and gets higher pay as well as some other posh perks (including apparently his choice of crew to share his bed at night based on several stories being circulated): when the proverbial stuff hits the fan it is his job to make the hard choices and that he needs to be consulted when any problem comes up.
In any navy or maritime service, having a ship run aground is always rationale to relief the captain and possibly press charges against that person. It goes with the job. They are responsible for everything that happens even if they weren't the one who was directly at the helm or even the "officer of the watch" on duty at the time. The captain "owns" the ship because in turn the ship "owns" the captain. Anything and I mean anything that happens on the ship, in the ship, or to the ship by definition is the captain's responsibility to deal with and make sure nothing awful happens.
If a screw-up happens because a crew members either doesn't or refuses to follow orders of the captain, it is up to the captain to discipline that crew member either himself or through his subordinates, and to know who in his command he (or she) can depend upon to have those orders followed. Just because this was a civilian cruise ship rather than a military vessel doesn't make that chain of command and line of responsibility any less important. If anything because it was a civilian ship with civilian passengers the responsibility of the captain is even more critical.
More importantly, if the reports are correct about this ship, it was his orders that had the ship moving so close to shore, and he took a very relaxed attitude toward crew and passenger safety. In this case in particular, he might as well have been the person actually at the helm "single handedly running the ship" as he had multiple opportunities to avoid the fiasco that actually unfolded. As if running the ship aground wasn't bad enough, his actions after the incident were pathetic and are cause for increased scorn. This guy wanted the perks, but none of the responsibilities.
At least the captain of the Titanic took it like a man and tried to organize chaos to ensure the safety of his crew and passengers even if he failed ultimately. That captain also went down with his ship. This particular captain of the Costa Concordia didn't even have the guts to do that and certainly didn't put the safety of his passengers above his own.
Co-founder of Nupedia you should add. Wikipedia was an afterthought for people who were too impatient to get an article through the Byzantine process of getting a Nupedia article created. The funny thing is that the free-for-all process of article creation at Wikipedia ended up becoming by far and away better quality than the structured academic process that Nupedia set up.
On the positive side, Jimbo Wales did add some of the initial content to Wikipedia oh so many years ago, not that he should necessarily be proud of those contribution. This "new article" certainly seems a bit odd for an example of a quality article. There were other edits done earlier, but the software on Wikipedia had some corruption of the edit history and some of those edits were lost even though the content has been preserved.
Predictions about states breaking off, particularly California, have been made since the beginning of the American Republic. This is nothing new. The reasons for such a break-off are surprisingly unchanged, yet California has remained a U.S. State for more than a century since that original prediction was made.
Yeah, I think these guys need to read history first, and learn a bit more about the topic they are pontificating about.
Members of congress like to replace one complicated mess of laws with an even more complicated set of laws that satisfies some lobbyist group or another. I think that can be done with Einstein's equations quite nicely, as BP and AT&T wouldn't mind a petty little thing like the constant for the speed of light to be modified in some way to improve their profits.
I could split hairs with you, since most of the leading physical science journals simply reject any sort of submission of LENR out of hand when it is presented in the first place. There are some "journals" that cater to the LENR crowd (usually called a "fringe journal" by some) that do have disclosures of running cold fusion devices. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons also claimed to have had a functioning device at the University of Utah, as well as Dr. Steven Jones at Brigham Young University (who used a neutron counter for measurements instead of a calorimeter). The paper in question by Pons and Fleishmann was published in Nature. As to if you accept the results of that paper or if you think it really was a working device, that is your problem and not mine. There are other claimed devices, but I'll admit the science is quite weak and there is legitimate room for skepticism as to if the concept is even valid.
As to if a functioning device could have "net energy gain", much less something that could produce commercially useful amounts of power, I also have my deep doubts about the idea. If anything, I am increasingly convinced that Andrea Rossi is nothing more than a charlatan trying to dupe people into buying a box with a bunch of pinball machine parts.
If you want to see an amazing video to show to "true believers" of the eCat, I highly recommend this amazing video of a "fusion device" purchased at IKEA:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsqSEw6Nti8
Seriously, you need to see this video after watching one of Rossi's numerous demonstrations, or at least show this to people who have been freshly exposed to the eCat concept. True believers will leave insulted, but it does put things in perspective.
Why would it not scale very well? The question here is more along the lines of why doesn't the end-customers simply take 100 or more of the "home units" and link them together?
Indeed, if you saw any of the videos being produced about the 1 MW plants being built, they are really just a series of much smaller units linked together in parallel rather than one massive reactor vessel. Why Rossi is suddenly claiming the 1 MW reactors is something different after claiming that it was "proof" of his technology is something that makes me even more skeptical of what is going on.
I just don't get it. Then again, perhaps this whole thing is just a bunch of BS from a talented con artist, in which case it shouldn't ever make sense.
The problem is that you still aren't going to be saving that much petroleum with this device if the costs to operate it not to mention the materials used to make it need to have petroleum based fuels (or other fossil fuels like coal and natural gas) being used to extract the Nickle or other materials being used to build the device.
If you are living "off the grid" and far from a more traditional power source, there still is solar cells and perhaps even a Diesel or gasoline generator to work with that are competing in theory with this device. Perhaps the e-cat could be competitive in price, and I'll admit that the price per kWh with those "off grid" generation methods can be as much as $1/kWh. No, the cost wouldn't shock me at all.
From the way you have written your post, I presume you care about the environmental consequences of energy production, and that is one thing that the e-Cat promoter are completely glossing over. Even if all of the fantastic claims about this device work out for the best and we can create electricity at $0.00001/kWh, I fear that it will lead to genuine global warming in a way that would put to shame anything being done with petroleum based energy production. With energy this cheap, you will see swimming pools being operated year round even in cold climates, people installing devices to thaw sidewalks, driveways, and parking lots for big box stores that keep melting snow, and in general a heat bubble coming out of larger cities the likes of which we have never seen before if for no other reason than energy will be cheap. Home will stop being insulated, and the very notion of energy efficiency will go completely out the window.
I have my current doubts about "global warming" and in particular "anthroprogenic global warming" as a significant factor around the globe right now, but e-Cats would completely clinch the argument for me and convince me that mankind is destroying this planet for once and for all. Energy that cheap would allow some Siberian cities to keep their rivers thawed out year-round and even deliberately deploying them to melt part of the Arctic Ocean. Yeah, that does real wonders for global climate change.
I was trying to be generous to the guy here. I may have missed a "demonstration" or two but I have never heard of him actually running one of these devices for more than a week. I've also done a rather generous survey of a great many of the "LENR devices" just trying to see what anybody else is doing, and if you even accept the fact that LENR/Cold Fusion is a real realm of scientific inquiry (I understand the hardcore skeptics) one of the persistent problems that seems to be in the field is the ability to keep the things running once you have them going. Typical in a LENR laboratory there are reports of fusion cells running for a few weeks and at most about a month or so, and those are reported as major success stories. For a home energy cell, that would piss off an ordinary consumer.
In other words, even in the realm of Cold Fusion, Rossi seems to be almost a nut job and doing stuff that is fantastic. That is saying a whole lot that ought to be raising red flags even on itself. This "breakthrough" is doing stuff that even people taking LENR seriously don't seem to be able to accomplish after decades of research. While Rossi is claiming all sorts of stuff about what his e-cat could be doing, his breakthroughs seem to be even more on the fantastic and he hasn't even put an upper limit on how long one of his cells is going to be working, or even acknowledging that it might be an issue at all.
This might be an interesting scientific curiosity, and if it is then there certainly is room to tinker in a lab and perhaps even have a "home fusion" kit that you can buy for an elementary school science fair. I think if I had a kid seriously interested in doing that, I would encourage them to instead invest in a Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor device than one of Rossi's fusion cells, as the science involved is a lot more clear and looking at a Fusor going into "star mode" is just stinking cool. An e-cat cell might as well be a kettle on a hot plate.
I take it you didn't read a single thing I wrote. The operating costs are far more than replacing the Nickel catalyst every once in awhile.
*facepalm*
Le'ts think that through a little bit more. Rossi just "announced" how his "1 MW" reactor is now going to be sold for the low, low price of $1.5 million (from the previous $2 M he has been supposedly selling them for). For the sake of argument here, let's say that this reactor technology can scale down to a home generator plant for 10kW at a proportional price, which would give you a $15,000 home unit instead of the $1500 one that you think you are going to get. BTW, this is the only thing that Rossi is actually selling at the moment, or at least claiming to sell and the rest if a pipe dream. Perhaps "economies of scale" can help reduce manufacturing costs, but that is the only hard data point I have at the moment. Rossi claims it could get as cheap as $50 per kilowatt, but that sounds more like a con man talking than something real. I will grant the upper price limit of about $20k for a 10kW unit, and if you want to put the lower price limit at $1500, I'll buy that as reasonable.
On top of that, there has been absolutely no discussion as to what "ongoing" expenses there might be to actually operate this device. Even from Rossi's own accounts and from people "in the know" that have successful devices running cold fusion, the longest I've heard of one of those devices working is about a week or so, perhaps a month on the outside. I'll give the benefit of the doubt that Rossi has made a substantial breakthrough and made a device that will work non-stop for about a year (considered a miracle even among the true believers in cold fusion), I still don't see how this is going to make it to ten years. Keep in mind even all of the "demonstrations" that Rossi has done only lasted 24 hours, perhaps two days at most. He has yet to set up a device running for several weeks at a time, if only on a web cam as a "demonstration" that could easily be faked as well. It is a stretch, but I would put ten years as the hard absolute limit of operation before the device needs to be refurbished even if it works exactly as Rossi claims (which I have my serious doubts).
Even with all of this, there seems to be some sort of power requirement necessary to keep the reactor sustained (at least if you even think this device works at all). The most common way to deliver that energy is through electricity, where you can leverage the power consumed by the device by some ratio of energy input to energy being produced. Keep in mind that the power rating that Rossi is claiming is heat being produced by the devices and not electricity, noting that there will be some energy conversion costs transforming that heat into electricity. Here is also where the fuzzy details of how the device really works make a real problem trying to nail down prices. With the demonstration last October with his 1 MW plant, he had a 100 kW diesel generator sitting beside his "power plant" that was running during the demonstration. There was a "self-sustaining" mode, but my point here is pointing out that there is only some leveraging going on of the electricity input, and that a continuous power supply is necessary to make the thing work.
Sure, your "home energy unit" might be producing 10 kW of heat, but it sure won't be producing 10kW of electricity. I really am not convinced that if you had two of these units both connected to hyper efficient turbines producing electricity with some thermocouples trying to pick up some of the last watts generated before the waste heat finally has to be vented that they will even be able to power each other. For the sake of argument here, let's just presume that there still is an energy gain of some sort (wishful thinking even if Rossi is correct) and that you also don't need an air conditioner to keep the reactor room cool enough to operate if it is in a warm climate (further reducing efficiency). The question comes up therefore what is the ratio of energy input into a unit vs. how much is actually produced. Another variable is the efficiency of the turbines available that can be scaled to a home energy uni
If you are so stinking worried that North Korea, Iran, "The Taliban", Irish Republican Army, Ku Klux Klan, Symbionese Liberation Army, Deseret Liberation Organization, Martian Frontier Front, or any other group of would-be idiots who may have some intelligence to understand the basic principles of physics on their own, you need to convince your local congressmen that the laws of physics need to be repealed and modified so only friendly governments could ever discover those laws on their own. Something like legally making pi equal to exactly 3.12 instead of the more traditionally accepted irrational number. Legislators have that authority and ability, don't they?
If you know anything about nuclear physics in general and about how cold fusion is even claimed to be working, you might even wish that these kind of nut jobs spend all of their resources, time, and energy into developing cold fusion if for no other reason than it is a wonder way to keep people spinning their wheels doing something that will never be productive or useful. Sort of like how the Allied High Command in World War II kept bombing "ball bearing factories" and "heavy water factories" even though both were sort of pointless other than as a way to throw off potential researchers thinking there was something significant there.
I suppose you could make a bomb out of cold fusion devices. You can also make a bomb more successfully out of a gallon of gasoline or 190 proof alcohol. You don't need an advanced degree in nuclear physics to figure out how to make something that will kill somebody else. You can also make a bomb out of chicken poop, some grass clippings, and burning down part of a tree if you have some patience. Those who are so worried about the potential of somebody else doing harm are likely going to harm themselves in the process. Does that imply we need to control the sale of eggs, wheat, and acorns as those might be considered potential munitions?
The sad thing is that this kind of thinking how perhaps you can stop this line of research is a common type of government policy at the moment. It is also important to note it will stop more legitimate scientific progress in a great many other areas, and more significantly by stopping that kind of scientific inquiry it is going to keep more people in a state of poverty and ruin far more lives because that research is being stopped than would be the case if people simply are granted liberty to act as their own agents. Outlawing research also has a way of biting you back as it even encourages the research to be done... by the kind of people who would deliberately use it for malicious purposes.
More generally, I am not worried at all about Andrea Rossi with what he has developed, regardless of if he has a working device that actually produces energy or if it is a bunch of tea kettles in one of the most brilliant con games in history. Well, almost the greatest, he still hasn't been able to beat Bernie Madoff yet.
Actually, I think Code Academy does a pretty good job of explaining the why part. Most of the lessons are getting your hands dirty and actually coding stuff rather than a dry textbook sort of explanation, where you are encouraged to experiment and do variations of the coding as you are developing the example software.
What annoys me with the for loop in particular is that they really don't go over the syntax in a manner sufficient for beginners as it is a very complex structure. The "C" for loop (which Javascript also uses) is exceedingly complex for a beginning student. You can give a quick prototype to gloss over all of the things it does to simply get stuff to happen, but IMHO the depth of coverage currently in the lessons is far too shallow.
BTW, this gets back to their licensing model, where they are not open to new content from people who really understand the concepts and assuming that one or two people are the font of all possible knowledge on the topic. There are many people would wouldn't mind contributing a better way to teach some of the concepts, but the site isn't equipped to accept those contributors.
I have been largely self-taught in terms of the art of computer programming, but I will acknowledge that it is an acquired skill that doesn't come easy and took considerable time to actually learn. I have also taken formal software engineering courses at a university (as well as the usual programming classes) in part because I acknowledge that there were gaps in my education along the way that needed to be filled in.
I have had supervisors and even CEOs who dabbled a little bit with code, where they knew enough "to be dangerous". On the positive side, those in a supervisory position over software developers and working on the management side having real knowledge of how to develop software on even a simple level is usually better than somebody who is completely ignorant of computers... at least in terms of trying to explain why you might be behind schedule or how difficult it is to kill a bug. On the other hand, if they've never developed software more complex than a couple hundred lines of code, they have no clue how complex interactions between parts can be or how hard it is to try and fix the problems that a co-worker (or worse yet, a former co-worker) caused due to simply being sloppy and taking shortcuts in the development process that you now have to fix. Just as bad, trying to explain to those who know a little bit of software development that you can't jump right in and start coding on day one of a new project, or that any such software developed that first week is likely going to need to be thrown out afterward.
The worst is a half-way decent prototype created by the boss that you are told to "fix" and make it into a workable product. If you are lucky, you get to scrap the whole thing and start over with a clean sheet, but I've had to "add functionality" to a rough prototype all the time working around the kludge that a boss developed previously and try not to bruise their ego so bad by throwing stuff out, acknowledging that they are the boss and can fire your ass if you cut too deeply.
While I like what Code Academy is doing, I do not like their terms of service ("we own everything you do, including the software you write in these lessons and can exploit this mercilessly at our discretion without even giving you attribution. If you design a lesson for us, we own it and you automatically give us copyright and intellectual property rights without renumeration or even acknowledgement.") They also plan on charging visitors to their site eventually, so expect a "bait and switch" if you get into it.
On top of that, what they have is useful for about the equivalent of the first week or so in an introductory computer science class. It is useful to get started and to "wet your feet", but by the time you are through all you can do is roughly the equivalent of writing a "Hello World" in Javascript.
It looks like they are planning on taking it much further, so I do reserve judgement on the rest of what they are going to do, and apparently they have several series of lessons in the wings that they are planning on releasing about one each week through the rest of the year, at least if I can read between the lines. It could be useful though.
The Libertarian and Constitution Parties routinely get ballot access and are recognized in nearly all 50 states. I don't buy that as a legitimate excuse other than for somebody starting up a brand new philosophy from scratch that is completely separate.
I agree that ballot access is tough, and it takes coordination to pull off that access, but it isn't impossible. The problem is that the 3rd parties, once they get that ballot access, don't really do much with that access other than thump their chests and act as spoilers by siphoning off votes from one of the major parties in close contests.
It could be argued that it is the election district method of representation where there is but one representative for a given geographic area (two for the U.S. Senate, but those are almost always for separate years when they are up for election). I'm not so sure about that either as the United Kingdom has a similar system for representation in Parliament yet they are able to support multiple political parties. By far and away it is simply getting the bucks together to put together a credible campaign, or simply organizing enough people who might support a given candidate to counter the massive campaign budgets with volunteer labor. Either way, 3rd party groups simply don't seem to get the job done and close the circle in America.
Explain how "the voting system is rigged", then it might help to address the issue a bit better.
I think one of the worst aspects is how political parties are guaranteed a line on the general election ballot in most states for every office up for contest. If a political party was strictly about fundraising and promoting candidates of a particular philosophy rather than even being recognized at all on an official basis in elections, it would make a much better election process.
In other words, have primaries or as you are suggesting something like IRV or Condorcet voting (both have strengths and weaknesses) that were agnostic towards political parties, I think it would make for much cleaner elections. I do support some sort of primary process, where you could weed down the candidates and then put forward two, three, possibly even four candidates that showed some sort of viability (like getting at least 10% of the vote in the primary) who then in turn have a relatively short period of time (a couple of months or so) to "get their message out" for a final election. If all of the candidates would be of the same party, why would it matter?
Sadly, the only real party that matters in America isn't even the two major parties, but rather the "Incumbent Party", that wins more than 90% of the time, regardless of professed philosophical beliefs.
The way that the election laws are written, there isn't anything specific about political parties receiving funding, although there is "matching funding" that is leveraged by the major parties. It is also used by minor parties, as I know the Reform, Libertarian, and Constitution parties have all received at least some federal funding in the past. The problem is that you have to raise money in the first place to get the money, and the major parties are pretty good at finding donors to get the initial pot of money together.
I'd agree though that federal funding of presidential elections is a total joke and only makes the system worse. It also puts handcuffs on speech and election practices in general for which I would assert the 1st amendment ought to prohibit such activities, but courts and the U.S. Congress rarely care about pesky things like the Constitution as being relevant except when they are on the campaign trail speaking.
Usually there is at least somebody, somewhere, that wants to "fly the flag" even against an incumbent president of the same party, with the supposed hope that maybe in the next election cycle they would be the heir apparent and get the nomination the next time around. John McCain comes to mind when he ran against George W. Bush in 2004, and even Ted Kennedy running against Jimmy Carter in 1980. They may not get many votes or delegates, but they at least show up to the table and try. There is also the election of 1968 where the incumbent President didn't even bother trying to run himself (even though he constitutionally could) in part because of the Vietnam War and his perceived unpopularity.on top of some health issues that made him also want to "retire". Going back to 1956, Dwight Eisenhower even had challengers that showed up.
The surprising thing about the Democratic Party this time around is that absolutely nobody of any consequence is even bothering to try. Assuming Obama is re-elected, there will be an election in 2016 that will be of importance as Obama will be constitutionally prohibited from running again. Looking at the field, there isn't even somebody waiting in the wings "just in case" something happens to Obama over the next several months before the election. There is one strange guy in Miami Beach, Florida that claims to have raised $5 million to mount a campaign against Obama, but I have my doubts and the guy has some really weird things said about him when I do a quick Google search (Raphael Herman.... I just don't even know what to think of the guy). Even Bill Clinton at least had token opposition.
My point here is that historically there is at least somebody running in opposition, even if they are an incumbent President with widespread popular appeal. In this case, Obama seems to be very divisive even though I'll openly admit he does have a strong support base. It just seems odd that beyond some very genuine nut cases (raising money in the thousands of dollars range, combined less than $100k) is even trying to mount a campaign against Obama at all.
There is nothing legally or constitutionally prohibiting another political party from forming in America. Indeed there are several other would-be political parties that routinely get votes and even hold conventions and at least pretend to be competing against the major two.
The problem is really one of money and people willing to support those parties.
This said, I would have to agree with you that some of the legal mechanisms that keep the major parties entrenched into their position and keep other minor parties from getting accepted is a tragedy and something that ought to be fixed in some fashion. Something even as mundane as proportional allocation of electoral votes (tried in Colorado, and the voters failed to pass the referendum question) would go a long way to helping support 3rd parties being recognized as a legitimate political force. Or more importantly simply winning some seats somewhere, even if it isn't everywhere (like the Libertarians are trying to do with the Free State Project).
There are valiant attempts to go beyond the two major parties, but it takes people doing something about it rather than constantly bitching that they need to go. You also have to be very creative in terms of working within the system as you need to be aware that the deck is stacked against you.
H. Ross Perot had a real chance to make a real difference, had he not flaked out so awfully. If some billionaire or even a not so terribly huge group of multi-millionaires got together and wanted to make a real challenge to the status quo, I'm pretty certain they could make it work. Or perhaps if a group of more ordinary folks got together and put together a genuine populist movement (Occupy Wall Street actually getting organized in some fashion?) they a true competitive 3rd party could form. The sad thing is that most of the 3rd party groups want to remain 3rd party groups and aren't focused on actually winning elections instead of spreading their political message. That takes a whole lot of work, organization, and effort.
The R's and the D's are truly just 2 arms of the same beast. They both survive only due to blaming the other camp for all of the problems in the world.
If you want to see what I think very well may be an exhaustive list of literally every person running for President of the United States in 2012, I think this site may have it, together with what contact information is available for each of the candidates:
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P12/candidates.phtml#LBTN.1
It really is an exhaustive list, including would-be challengers to Barack Obama for the Democratic Party nomination and a host of 3rd party candidates as well. I will promise you that in this list is a candidate you have never heard about, or even a political party that you've never heard about as well. As to if anybody but the "R" or "D" actually has a realistic chance to get the office is another story, but there is some very real diversity in this group if you want to do something more than cast a vote for the same old, same old.
Some candidates that really stood out for me in this list was Brian J. Moran of Texas running as the "Jedi Knight Candidate", Caesar St Augustine de Buonaparte running for the "Absolute Dictator Party" nomination, and Anthony Ray "Tony" Smitherman running for the "After Party" nomination.
Reading this list is at least good for a laugh or two, as I can't believe all of these folks are seriously considering that they are going to run for this office. It makes me wonder where the Pirate Party candidates are at, as that is one political party that I see missing in action.
When the Kodak Brownie was introduced, yes, you could say that was their business model. It was successful for a great many decades too and Kodak made a pile of money off of that effort. They consumed so much silver for the production of their film that they even owned silver mines with much of the silver processed there was simply going to their own factories rather than being used for bullion or coins.
That said, Kodak also was instrumental in developing the digital camera, invented the *.psd image format (still by far the best quality image format you can get in terms of the dynamic range of colors you can record for any computer imaging data format) and put in the engineering effort to try and change with the times.
The sad thing is that this isn't the only photo equipment company which has suffered in terms of being relevant or even totally collapsed. The Polaroid Corporation was once a rather large company too, and now is only a marketing brand for Chinese knock-off cameras where the company itself doesn't even exist at all any more. If you look at Fujifilm, once a major competitor to Kodak, they are also struggling under the same kinds of problems and fighting for relevancy.
All told, it really is a shift of technology on to of a shift in business models that are required to be successful. Then again Xerox had a similar kind of problem trying to stay relevant over the years, where it could have owned the PC market with the devices built at their PARC research group but instead let Apple Computer (in the form of Steve Jobs) essentially copy all of their ideas and build the Macintosh.
I graduated from high school in '83 and there was no shortage of schools which offered computer science programs a the time, although admittedly many of the departments were relatively new at the time.
I took some time off to experience life and went back to school in the early 1990's where I know a separate Computer Engineering program was being created at the engineering college at the university I was attending, and there were four different majors offered at four different colleges that had a substantial amount of computer programming as a part of the curriculum. Computer Science (College of Science), Information Technology (Business College), Instructional Technology (Education College), and then an applied engineering major through the Engineering College (I can't remember the name.... but it did involve substantial programming). While I think that was a bit overboard for that many majors at the same university related to computer technology, it shows that at least by that time such majors were quite well established.
My father took a class in FORTRAN in the early 1960's (I think it was 1962) at Brigham Young University. Yes, it was quite early and the computing equipment was quite primitive, but it was something being taught at the time. He later told me about it because he complained about how some of the students would mess up his software because they dared to touch some of the equipment inside of the computer, and how some of the tubes in that computer (yes, tubes, not even transistors) even had a water-cooled heat dissipation system built with a pump inside of the component. He took the class as a part of a nuclear engineering program he was involved with at the time.
The strange thing was that he didn't ever really use the language outside of that one class until about 20 years later when he got an odd sort of slide project computer for a completely unrelated field (he became a photographer instead of completing the nuclear engineering program).
Yes, I know that computer programming classes were quite rare at the time and that most universities didn't even have computer science majors until at least the 1970s, but classes were offered at some schools much earlier. One of my best computer science professors had a PhD in Biology, in part because the CS department was desperate for anybody with programming experience.
I love COBOL statements like
MULTIPLY SEVEN BY SIXTEEN
rather than
7 * 16
How that made things more reasonable is beyond me. Yes, some variants of COBOL do allow more ordinary mathematical expressions like you would see in C++ or even FORTRAN, but this is a "feature" of COBOL that has always seemed a little off.
Not only that, but since processing out of contry cheques is significantly more expensive, international donations would basically dry up - international postage and inability to cash the donations.
The ace in the hole for the WMF in this situation is that they have local, autonomous chapters located in a great many countries that already are receiving donations for WMF activities in those countries. It would take much more than Visa, Mastercard, or even "the international banking system" to shut down all fundraising activities without some sort of series of raw laws that explicitly prohibit the WMF and Wikimedia projects from operating... sort of like how China keeps trying to shut down zh.wikipedia.
Far from drying up donations from "international donors", I think it would thrive and would become very well organized, with the money flowing from non-American sources easier than even within America. Heck, I think there could even be volunteers who would be willing to come to your home to pick up a donation if you didn't want to bother with a stamp. The volunteer community within Wikimedia projects is a bit better organized than you think.