Hydrogen is not a renewable energy source; hydrogen for combustion is a reusuable energy storage method. Pollution is relocated to the energy production facility.
And the Energy Profit Ratio on Ethanol is not good-- about 0.7 to 2.0, compared to 20 with modern oil or 100 for oil production about 1900. (Numbers pulled out of my memory; go google for the data yourself.) Admittedly, most people who rant about he global oil production Hubbert curve and Energy prophet ratios sound like prophets of doom; unfortunately, I have yet to encounter any refutation of these that addresess both, while paying attention to both Economics and Thermodynamics.
(Yes, economics says when demand exceeds supply, either supply will rise or demand will fall over time. Unfortunately, what Economists seldom mention is that sometimes demand falls due to massive population fatalities from the Four Horsemen.)
All the effort, fuel and pollution required just to get a hunk of metal off the ground and keep it there with the current technology is wasteful and unsustenable.
You have any other ways to get, say, to Europe and back in a reasonable amount of time..?
Depends on your definition of reasonable. It took about 65 days for the pilgrims to go from England to Massechusetts one way. If you still consider that reasonable, no problem. If you're trying to have Florida Oranges compete with Spain's in Europe, that's more of a problem. =)
Also note, the grandparent was noting that this is unsustainable. It may well be that sustainable use and what you consider a reasonable transit time are mutually exculsive engineering objectives... which means, enjoy it while it lasts, because someday we won't be able to do it any more.
Find a copy of The Dynamics of Growth in a Finite World, ISBN 0960029443 (1974). It's technical, but understandable by any computer geek who has played SimCity (any version) and can read at the high school level. Read, and be very afraid. There are flaws in the model-- but make sure you can rigidly justify any changes you make; most of the ways people change the model for a happy ending violate the laws of thermodynamics.
Guess what? Out of the 7 or 8 dvd playing devices I've ever owned, not ONE of them fails to read either format (including PS2).
I "own" about 50, counting all of the gear I support at work. (I'm a media tech as well as computer geek according to my job description.) The newer Dell and YumCha White Box PC drives are happy with both. Macintosh DVD drives are not happy with DVD+R (both the old ones go apeshit at CD-RW and the newer ones that don't) , although I haven't tested the drive of the one G5 we have. The cheap ChaYum $50 DVD player we picked up for emergency hot swaps and the couple 4-year old Panasonic DVD players only talk to -R as well, but the genuine RCA Div-X player that I picked up for $10 from a freind who was moving plays anything I throw at it. On the other hand, we've an early RCA player at the job that won't touch anything but true DVD-ROM. I'm not a consoler, so I can't testify on those. I will note that nothing likes DVD-RAM but DVD-RAM, but we knew that going in.
I currently recommend -R for compatibility if you don't know what device you'll be trying to play it on. For newer devices, your odds are very good for either + or -, but for older gear, I've seen about 95% compatibiltiy for -R and 20% compatibility for +R.
Perhaps I was mistaken, but my understanding was not that they were shunned (IE, treated as a somewhat noisy ambulatory rock-- to be ignored), but that they were treated as a stranger-- IE, any other outsider: treated politely if distantly, but not ignored. Now, if after Rumspringa you join the church, and change your mind , then you're definitely an un-person and shunned.
Fanaticism is a slightly strong term for the Amish-- although only slightly. Like all societies, they have rules. In the case of the Amish, they put limits on technology, social conduct, and require a certain religious doctrine. If you want to be part of the society, you have to follow the rules. Most outsiders aren't fans of these limits; most members of the society feel the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Unlike most fanatics, they don't insist that everyone be part of their society.
More unfortunate is that their social code retains the Victorian and Midaeval hypocricy that if all can be kept looking well on the surface, all is well-- especially with child and spousal abuse. Their social mechanisms do not seem to solve such problems well.
I have also never heard of data loss caused by an iPod. It's a standard hard drive.
I have-- as noted, it's a standard hard drive. If you are stupid enough to drop it from a sixth-floor window onto concrete, don't be shocked if you need a commercial data recovery service.
That said, that's true of most storage media out there. Pen drives are substantially more impact resistant due to lighter weight and smaller size (especially sub-pen drives like this one-- I seem to recall some ad listing one of this style as being 3 grams), but pricier for space. Since the querent emphasized a desire for size, I'd recommend a hard drive type solution (whether iPod or other) anyway, and suggest you make a point of NOT dropping it out the window like my freind did. (Hi, Dave!)
My personal choices for storage:
1) A 256MB Pen drive, for files that I want accessible at all times (eg, copies of the Mac & PC site-licensed anti-virus installers), files I am using regularly (like the latest draft of my Great Novel), and a few backup files that need to survive impact as well as I do (mostly personal financial stuff, plus a couple encrypted certificates).
2) A 20GB Archos Jukebox Recorder, 2 years old. I wanted an MP3 player, but it backs up some of my files. Were I buying today, I'd probably get a 20GB iPod instead of an Archos, but that's just me. If you don't want an MP3 player, I'd still look into a 2.5 type model, but probably go with an enclosure kit; 20GB 2.5's are cheapish these days, and you can upgrade the kits easier than the non-kits. 80GB non-kits are available as well, but will cost up to $400. (I like the Lacie U&I pocket model with it's padding, but I lack the unlimited budget for it.)
3) A collection of four "Yum Cha" generic USB/Firewire 3.5/5.25" boxes, models compatible with 250GB+ hard drives. Three have 80GB drives at the moment, which I will upgrade to 250's as space needs dictate (probably Xmas 2K5); one I keep free for data migration from older computers to newer ones-- yank old drive from old machine, put in U/I box, connect to newer machine. Since the querent wasn't happy with Fry's bare bones models, a Western Digital or Lacie model (which both come with box and drive, as opposed to the "just-add-drive" kits I used) might be worth the extra cash.
Decide whether you want a 2.5" or a 3.5" based solution; the latter give more GB per buck and can be larger in total, but are a little bigger and heavier to carry about. Decide if you want USB2.0, Firewire, or both. Buy it. Get a pen drive, too, because they're cheap and handy.
There haven't been a whole lot of advancements that have radically changed the way Calculus I is taught.
I took the AP's BC Calc in high school about 1988. I'm curently back finishing up a degree part time (having dropped out of college in 1993 to get a plan, a clue, a life, and laid), and took a calc-using Probabilitiy class this past summer. The only thing that had changed was the marked increase in acceptance of the use of Tabular integration. From some forensic research with Google groups (which I decline to repeat now, so this is from memory), I turned up references indicating that it was first suggested in the early 80's, referenced in a paper in the late 80's, and was being haugtily disapproved of as a lazy trick when I was dropping out. By the late 90's, the tide had shifted, and at this college it's gone from being unmentioned to being the standard method taught for the types of problems where it's useful. (I suspect the retirement of the entire section of the math department holding tenure as of my first year of college is not a coincidence in this.)
Mind you, this is one change in 15 years. The calc text went through five editions in that time. Hmmm...
The non-existence of a Farscape movie; the ineptitude of the production of the Farscape movie when it exists.
The Hobbit (for existing, if done without Jackson; for taking forever, if done with Jackson).
King Kong.
Oh, and I have over a decade worth of complaining left on the existance of the Vintar "I, Robot" movie and the non-existance of an Ellison "I, Robot" movie.
Firstly compression would always yield some content at current formats even if the source was larger.
Which already is used to some extent. For some pirates, it's good enough. And given some of the theatre sizes and soundsystems in my town at least, it's comparable to the local movieplex. Since not everyone is going to blow 50 k$ on a home theatre, especially in the current economy, this bodes ill.
It is, however, flamebait and fodder for the conservatives to jump over.
Reading the fine print in the article allows flamebait for the liberals too.
Our most compassionate (or cowardly) feelings [...] emanate from a different part of the brain -- most notably, the amygdala.
[T]he early data suggested that the most salient predictor of a ''Democrat brain'' was amygdala activity responding to certain images of violence[...]
People who suffer from damaged or impaired emotional systems can score well on logic tests but often display markedly irrational behavior in everyday life.
In short, not only are Democrats compassionate but cowardly, but Republicans are logical in theory but brain-damaged in practice. =)
The media tries to explain that theres supply problem, but they say it's because of terrorism.
This is actually half true. The Hubbert curve is a function of production capacity versus accessibility, as well as total reserves. As easily accessible reserves run out, we must begin to look to areas that are less accessible for one reason or another. So far, we've been dealing with mainly geophysisical barriers-- barren deserts, deep oceans, frigid polar regions-- that have provided interesting engineering challenges. Now, we face geopolitical barriers-- like terrorism.
The half that isn't true, is the implication that without those damn terrorists, things would get better and stay that way.
Indeed; but at what energy profit ratio? Hopefully we have enough of the Hubbert curve left to make it to a long term solution. Otherwise, we're going to be seeing an lot of Hobbes' choices in petropolitics. And, no, I did not mean Hobbson's choices.
At times, I wonder if Bush is fighting this war because he's aware of the gap, has decided that being a global asshole is the only way to make sure (Western) industrial civilization can make it through the impending shortfall, and after considering the consequences of both sides decided this is the lesser of two evils... but I don't think he (or Cheney) is that smart.
Too much of modern civilization relies on the irreproducable proprties of plastics. Biodiesel is the only alternative source for generalized plastic feedstocks. If we're lucky, we're looking at a nasty problem by 2015 when the Hubbert curve peaks. If we're not lucky, the problem started in the last few years, and the nerve signals are about to reach the petrodinosaur's brains.
It would be robocool to fill the list up with random names. Like[...]
Random? How about you go to the root of the problem? Start with "Tom Ridge", and see how long things stay the way they are. Mind you, "Edward Kennedy" was probably a good first choice for getting some noisy hell raised about the situation.
Incidentally, I thought I heard back in high school American government class that it was massively illegal to interfere with a member of Congress on their way to or from the House/Senate floor? Anyone?
The Briq is one, PPC based. (It used to be a Yellow briQ with Yellowdog Linux, instead of a red briQ with Yellowdog Linux.) Doesn't support two network interfaces unless you take the top off to put a PCI card in, though.
As a potential member of a jury pool, I'd lean to the belief that distributing the DDOS program could plausibly be prosecuted under USC Title 18, Chapter 47, Section 1030.5, against someone who
"knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer"... causing "loss to 1 or more persons during any 1-year period [...] aggregating at least $5,000 in value."
Note: attempted offenses also seem to be listed as prosecutable.
Now, advocating that all of the Kerry supporters should spend the time during the convention MANUALLY looking around every nook and cranny of the RNC website -- IE, Slashdotting them -- would be substantially harder to plausibly prosecute. A federal prosecutor might be able to pull some sort of conspiracy charge out of his... office, but I'd give better odds on a lawyer being able to help you beat the rap. After all, they're supposed to be the Republican NATIONAL Committee; they should expect that everyone in the nation is going to want to hear what they have to say-- all at once, even =) -- and should plan their servers accordingly.
I, for one, welcome our new Damn Yankee American overlords... No, wait, I am one!
Do they know what totalitarian means?
"Of or relating to centralized control by an autocratic leader or hierarchy : AUTHORITARIAN, DICTATORIAL; especially : DESPOTIC; of or relating to a political regime based on subordination of the individual to the state and strict control of all aspects of the life and productive capacity of the nation especially by coercive measures."
Do they admit their own failings?
What, that we're a bunch of fat, lazy, arrogant, meddlesome, self-centered, provincial assholes? Yeah, on our good days. Of course, we don't think any other global power in history has been much better. Take a look at the Romans, the British Empire, the French Empire, and the Spanish Empire. We don't want to rule the world-- we're too lazy. We just want things to be quiet enough for us to continue enjoying decadence without having ever been civilized.
Can they make sentences w/ subject/verb agreement?
What, this sentence no verb? =)
The school systems need work. So does the part of society that has de-emphasised the value of an education. Of course, our having (sorta) elected a nitwit yammerhead zealot over a flaky liberal intellectual technocrat doesn't set a good example on those lines.
I'm not trying to say that Americans are slobbering idiots that deserve the crap leaders they get
Not all of us are. However, "Democracy is where everyone gets what the majority deserve." And I'd say "ignoramuses" would be closer than "idiots".
I don't know the solution to the problem, but counting on analytical, intelligent voters is not it.
Not until about 20 years after we get our education system working again, anyway.
OF course a $50 NAT firewall/router will render this whole discussion moot.
...provided you have a high speed connection. Otherwise it takes about a $100-$200 NAT firewall/router for your modem to make things moot.
(If the machine can't have modem or ethernet, why are you worried about network security? Most antivirus products keep Sneakernet fairly safe.)
True, if a thing doesn't exist, it's scarce. But once intelectual property is created, it is no longer scarce (except through artificial control of the supply). This is totally unlike tangible goods.
In the case of intellectual property, the scarce item is the intellect needed to produce it. Of course, once created, duplication is vastly easier. (A more tangible example than software is with pharmecuticals-- pills are expensive to prove that they are safe and effective, but cheap to make once you know what you need to make.)
One of the major advantages of capitalism is that it has feedback loops, EG Higher demand leads to higher prices leads (usually) to more production. Unlike tangiible goods, this feedback is somewhat broken in the natural state for "intellectual property" and creative efforts. Markets are very good at judging the quality of an invention (demand), but do not turn that to an incentive (payment) for the inventors, but rather provide payment to all of the producers, "pirate" or otherwise. After the patent and copyright wars in Europe in the 1300's to 1600's, the US at its founding decided that the solution was to provide an exclusive right to the inventor/author for a limited time, thus solving the problem of rewarding creators and avoiding the historic abuses of arbitrary Royal patents.
Behavior rewarded is repeated; the converse is true as well.
Does anyone have a better system to propose for both measuring the quality of inventors'/authors' products, and then linking the reward for the inventors/authors thereto?
True, for many contributors to open source software, the authors are rewarded simply by feeling that they thus contribute to the betterment of society. However, this only works if they are contributing from their disposable time/income-- essentially no-one writes GPL software until they've got food to put on the table and and a roof over their head.
If the skill set isn't a good way to make a living, most of those with the requisite aptitudes will work develop another for keeping bread and beer on the table.
Designing and writing usuable code does require a certain amount of training-- you can "Good Will Hunting" the education required, but most people (alas) do not casually pick up the habits of structured thought needed to translate a job into machine-comprehensible steps, or see how the parts of a system (computer, economic, political, etc.) interact. It also requires a certain aptitude to do it well.
If those creating the open source software do not acquire the needed skills for coding & design as part of their livelihood, then both the programming and also the time and money to train oneself to be able to do it will need to come from contributor's disposable time and income, from the pool of those with the talents needed. Furthermore, I suggest that coding improves with practice; and since they won't be working at coding, they will be less practiced. This will hardly lead to the continued evolution and improvement of open source.
Maybe not, but the things that are commoditized are no longer scarce. Operating system kernels, C compilers, web browsers, and word processors are no longer scarce because we have linux, gcc, mozilla, and open office.
Highly inaccurate. You are implicitly assuming a perfect substitutability between (Windows, OSX, BSD, Linux)/(Borland C++, gcc)/(Internet Explorer, Safari, Lynx, Mozilla)/(Microsoft Office, AppleWorks, KOffice, OpenOffice, StarOffice). The substitutibility is highly imperfect, and incidentally current demand behavior suggests that Open Source products behave as an "inferior good" in the economic sense of the word. Furthermore. the "scarcity" of Microsoft Office may be artificial, but it exists nonetheless, for copyright/patent reasons I noted above.
(You can teach a parrot to be a passably good economist; all you have to do is train it to say "Awk! Law of Supply and Demand!" any time someone asks it a question.)
do it with a SFF or Mini-ITX form factor, that problem dissapears.
Mmmm... no. It becomes managable. However, even an 8x8x12 system is noticably larger than the Airport Extreme, or the SMC Barricade someone mentioned (even after adding a RS232).I can usually get any PC or Mac up enough to talk to the net with gear that fits into half of a CaseLogic 64 CD case (the drivers, OSes, &c take up the other half) and a Yum Cha USB/Firewire box, provided that CPU, motherboard, and memory are OK. So, adding even a SFF/Mini-ITX will more than double the size of the pile I need to carry. Maybe I'll get an OQO. =)
Mind you, connecting can be a bit of a challenge, and it's been a pain to find all of the gear (EG, a small USB modem with both Mac and PC drivers), but it does make housecalls easier-- and it's mindboggling what you can get away with when you're a techie who makes housecalls.
This is why the average repair techie should have as part of his desktop workbench repair kit a consumer router-- because even if network ops screws up and the rest of the network is infected, you can have at least one clean room to work from. =)
Anyone know of a NAT router that will share a POTS dialup aside from the Apple Airport Extreme?
Slashdot Mirror
Hydrogen is not a renewable energy source; hydrogen for combustion is a reusuable energy storage method. Pollution is relocated to the energy production facility.
And the Energy Profit Ratio on Ethanol is not good-- about 0.7 to 2.0, compared to 20 with modern oil or 100 for oil production about 1900. (Numbers pulled out of my memory; go google for the data yourself.) Admittedly, most people who rant about he global oil production Hubbert curve and Energy prophet ratios sound like prophets of doom; unfortunately, I have yet to encounter any refutation of these that addresess both, while paying attention to both Economics and Thermodynamics.
(Yes, economics says when demand exceeds supply, either supply will rise or demand will fall over time. Unfortunately, what Economists seldom mention is that sometimes demand falls due to massive population fatalities from the Four Horsemen.)
Also note, the grandparent was noting that this is unsustainable. It may well be that sustainable use and what you consider a reasonable transit time are mutually exculsive engineering objectives... which means, enjoy it while it lasts, because someday we won't be able to do it any more.
Find a copy of The Dynamics of Growth in a Finite World, ISBN 0960029443 (1974). It's technical, but understandable by any computer geek who has played SimCity (any version) and can read at the high school level. Read, and be very afraid. There are flaws in the model-- but make sure you can rigidly justify any changes you make; most of the ways people change the model for a happy ending violate the laws of thermodynamics.
OK, then, News Flash: I've locked my keys in my car and can't get in, dammit.
Fortunately, here at the library there's a free machine I can read /. at until the tow truck guy gets here with his window jimmy.
I "own" about 50, counting all of the gear I support at work. (I'm a media tech as well as computer geek according to my job description.) The newer Dell and YumCha White Box PC drives are happy with both. Macintosh DVD drives are not happy with DVD+R (both the old ones go apeshit at CD-RW and the newer ones that don't) , although I haven't tested the drive of the one G5 we have. The cheap ChaYum $50 DVD player we picked up for emergency hot swaps and the couple 4-year old Panasonic DVD players only talk to -R as well, but the genuine RCA Div-X player that I picked up for $10 from a freind who was moving plays anything I throw at it. On the other hand, we've an early RCA player at the job that won't touch anything but true DVD-ROM. I'm not a consoler, so I can't testify on those. I will note that nothing likes DVD-RAM but DVD-RAM, but we knew that going in.
I currently recommend -R for compatibility if you don't know what device you'll be trying to play it on. For newer devices, your odds are very good for either + or -, but for older gear, I've seen about 95% compatibiltiy for -R and 20% compatibility for +R.
Fanaticism is a slightly strong term for the Amish-- although only slightly. Like all societies, they have rules. In the case of the Amish, they put limits on technology, social conduct, and require a certain religious doctrine. If you want to be part of the society, you have to follow the rules. Most outsiders aren't fans of these limits; most members of the society feel the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Unlike most fanatics, they don't insist that everyone be part of their society.
More unfortunate is that their social code retains the Victorian and Midaeval hypocricy that if all can be kept looking well on the surface, all is well-- especially with child and spousal abuse. Their social mechanisms do not seem to solve such problems well.
More accurately, because America was found first, and the British knew which group they wanted to be rid of first.
I have-- as noted, it's a standard hard drive. If you are stupid enough to drop it from a sixth-floor window onto concrete, don't be shocked if you need a commercial data recovery service.
That said, that's true of most storage media out there. Pen drives are substantially more impact resistant due to lighter weight and smaller size (especially sub-pen drives like this one-- I seem to recall some ad listing one of this style as being 3 grams), but pricier for space. Since the querent emphasized a desire for size, I'd recommend a hard drive type solution (whether iPod or other) anyway, and suggest you make a point of NOT dropping it out the window like my freind did. (Hi, Dave!)
My personal choices for storage:
1) A 256MB Pen drive, for files that I want accessible at all times (eg, copies of the Mac & PC site-licensed anti-virus installers), files I am using regularly (like the latest draft of my Great Novel), and a few backup files that need to survive impact as well as I do (mostly personal financial stuff, plus a couple encrypted certificates).
2) A 20GB Archos Jukebox Recorder, 2 years old. I wanted an MP3 player, but it backs up some of my files. Were I buying today, I'd probably get a 20GB iPod instead of an Archos, but that's just me. If you don't want an MP3 player, I'd still look into a 2.5 type model, but probably go with an enclosure kit; 20GB 2.5's are cheapish these days, and you can upgrade the kits easier than the non-kits. 80GB non-kits are available as well, but will cost up to $400. (I like the Lacie U&I pocket model with it's padding, but I lack the unlimited budget for it.)
3) A collection of four "Yum Cha" generic USB/Firewire 3.5/5.25" boxes, models compatible with 250GB+ hard drives. Three have 80GB drives at the moment, which I will upgrade to 250's as space needs dictate (probably Xmas 2K5); one I keep free for data migration from older computers to newer ones-- yank old drive from old machine, put in U/I box, connect to newer machine. Since the querent wasn't happy with Fry's bare bones models, a Western Digital or Lacie model (which both come with box and drive, as opposed to the "just-add-drive" kits I used) might be worth the extra cash.
Decide whether you want a 2.5" or a 3.5" based solution; the latter give more GB per buck and can be larger in total, but are a little bigger and heavier to carry about. Decide if you want USB2.0, Firewire, or both. Buy it. Get a pen drive, too, because they're cheap and handy.
I took the AP's BC Calc in high school about 1988. I'm curently back finishing up a degree part time (having dropped out of college in 1993 to get a plan, a clue, a life, and laid), and took a calc-using Probabilitiy class this past summer. The only thing that had changed was the marked increase in acceptance of the use of Tabular integration. From some forensic research with Google groups (which I decline to repeat now, so this is from memory), I turned up references indicating that it was first suggested in the early 80's, referenced in a paper in the late 80's, and was being haugtily disapproved of as a lazy trick when I was dropping out. By the late 90's, the tide had shifted, and at this college it's gone from being unmentioned to being the standard method taught for the types of problems where it's useful. (I suspect the retirement of the entire section of the math department holding tenure as of my first year of college is not a coincidence in this.)
Mind you, this is one change in 15 years. The calc text went through five editions in that time. Hmmm...
Harry Potter Numbers 4, 5, 6, and 7.
Fantastic Four, Iron Man.
X-Men 3, Spiderman 3.
The non-existence of a Farscape movie; the ineptitude of the production of the Farscape movie when it exists.
The Hobbit (for existing, if done without Jackson; for taking forever, if done with Jackson).
King Kong.
Oh, and I have over a decade worth of complaining left on the existance of the Vintar "I, Robot" movie and the non-existance of an Ellison "I, Robot" movie.
That get us to 2014 yet?
Which already is used to some extent. For some pirates, it's good enough. And given some of the theatre sizes and soundsystems in my town at least, it's comparable to the local movieplex. Since not everyone is going to blow 50 k$ on a home theatre, especially in the current economy, this bodes ill.
Reading the fine print in the article allows flamebait for the liberals too.
In short, not only are Democrats compassionate but cowardly, but Republicans are logical in theory but brain-damaged in practice. =)This is actually half true. The Hubbert curve is a function of production capacity versus accessibility, as well as total reserves. As easily accessible reserves run out, we must begin to look to areas that are less accessible for one reason or another. So far, we've been dealing with mainly geophysisical barriers-- barren deserts, deep oceans, frigid polar regions-- that have provided interesting engineering challenges. Now, we face geopolitical barriers-- like terrorism.
The half that isn't true, is the implication that without those damn terrorists, things would get better and stay that way.
At times, I wonder if Bush is fighting this war because he's aware of the gap, has decided that being a global asshole is the only way to make sure (Western) industrial civilization can make it through the impending shortfall, and after considering the consequences of both sides decided this is the lesser of two evils... but I don't think he (or Cheney) is that smart.
Too much of modern civilization relies on the irreproducable proprties of plastics. Biodiesel is the only alternative source for generalized plastic feedstocks. If we're lucky, we're looking at a nasty problem by 2015 when the Hubbert curve peaks. If we're not lucky, the problem started in the last few years, and the nerve signals are about to reach the petrodinosaur's brains.
Random? How about you go to the root of the problem? Start with "Tom Ridge", and see how long things stay the way they are. Mind you, "Edward Kennedy" was probably a good first choice for getting some noisy hell raised about the situation.
Incidentally, I thought I heard back in high school American government class that it was massively illegal to interfere with a member of Congress on their way to or from the House/Senate floor? Anyone?
"knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer"... causing "loss to 1 or more persons during any 1-year period [...] aggregating at least $5,000 in value."
Note: attempted offenses also seem to be listed as prosecutable.
Now, advocating that all of the Kerry supporters should spend the time during the convention MANUALLY looking around every nook and cranny of the RNC website -- IE, Slashdotting them -- would be substantially harder to plausibly prosecute. A federal prosecutor might be able to pull some sort of conspiracy charge out of his... office, but I'd give better odds on a lawyer being able to help you beat the rap. After all, they're supposed to be the Republican NATIONAL Committee; they should expect that everyone in the nation is going to want to hear what they have to say-- all at once, even =) -- and should plan their servers accordingly.
OTOH, IANAL.
I, for one, welcome our new Damn Yankee American overlords... No, wait, I am one!
Do they know what totalitarian means?
"Of or relating to centralized control by an autocratic leader or hierarchy : AUTHORITARIAN, DICTATORIAL; especially : DESPOTIC; of or relating to a political regime based on subordination of the individual to the state and strict control of all aspects of the life and productive capacity of the nation especially by coercive measures."
Do they admit their own failings?
What, that we're a bunch of fat, lazy, arrogant, meddlesome, self-centered, provincial assholes? Yeah, on our good days. Of course, we don't think any other global power in history has been much better. Take a look at the Romans, the British Empire, the French Empire, and the Spanish Empire. We don't want to rule the world-- we're too lazy. We just want things to be quiet enough for us to continue enjoying decadence without having ever been civilized.
Can they make sentences w/ subject/verb agreement?
What, this sentence no verb? =)
The school systems need work. So does the part of society that has de-emphasised the value of an education. Of course, our having (sorta) elected a nitwit yammerhead zealot over a flaky liberal intellectual technocrat doesn't set a good example on those lines.
I'm not trying to say that Americans are slobbering idiots that deserve the crap leaders they get
Not all of us are. However, "Democracy is where everyone gets what the majority deserve." And I'd say "ignoramuses" would be closer than "idiots".
I don't know the solution to the problem, but counting on analytical, intelligent voters is not it.
Not until about 20 years after we get our education system working again, anyway.
One of the major advantages of capitalism is that it has feedback loops, EG Higher demand leads to higher prices leads (usually) to more production. Unlike tangiible goods, this feedback is somewhat broken in the natural state for "intellectual property" and creative efforts. Markets are very good at judging the quality of an invention (demand), but do not turn that to an incentive (payment) for the inventors, but rather provide payment to all of the producers, "pirate" or otherwise. After the patent and copyright wars in Europe in the 1300's to 1600's, the US at its founding decided that the solution was to provide an exclusive right to the inventor/author for a limited time, thus solving the problem of rewarding creators and avoiding the historic abuses of arbitrary Royal patents.
Behavior rewarded is repeated; the converse is true as well. Does anyone have a better system to propose for both measuring the quality of inventors'/authors' products, and then linking the reward for the inventors/authors thereto?
True, for many contributors to open source software, the authors are rewarded simply by feeling that they thus contribute to the betterment of society. However, this only works if they are contributing from their disposable time/income-- essentially no-one writes GPL software until they've got food to put on the table and and a roof over their head. If the skill set isn't a good way to make a living, most of those with the requisite aptitudes will work develop another for keeping bread and beer on the table.
Designing and writing usuable code does require a certain amount of training-- you can "Good Will Hunting" the education required, but most people (alas) do not casually pick up the habits of structured thought needed to translate a job into machine-comprehensible steps, or see how the parts of a system (computer, economic, political, etc.) interact. It also requires a certain aptitude to do it well. If those creating the open source software do not acquire the needed skills for coding & design as part of their livelihood, then both the programming and also the time and money to train oneself to be able to do it will need to come from contributor's disposable time and income, from the pool of those with the talents needed. Furthermore, I suggest that coding improves with practice; and since they won't be working at coding, they will be less practiced. This will hardly lead to the continued evolution and improvement of open source.
Highly inaccurate. You are implicitly assuming a perfect substitutability between (Windows, OSX, BSD, Linux)/(Borland C++, gcc)/(Internet Explorer, Safari, Lynx, Mozilla)/(Microsoft Office, AppleWorks, KOffice, OpenOffice, StarOffice). The substitutibility is highly imperfect, and incidentally current demand behavior suggests that Open Source products behave as an "inferior good" in the economic sense of the word. Furthermore. the "scarcity" of Microsoft Office may be artificial, but it exists nonetheless, for copyright/patent reasons I noted above.(You can teach a parrot to be a passably good economist; all you have to do is train it to say "Awk! Law of Supply and Demand!" any time someone asks it a question.)
Mmmm... no. It becomes managable. However, even an 8x8x12 system is noticably larger than the Airport Extreme, or the SMC Barricade someone mentioned (even after adding a RS232).I can usually get any PC or Mac up enough to talk to the net with gear that fits into half of a CaseLogic 64 CD case (the drivers, OSes, &c take up the other half) and a Yum Cha USB/Firewire box, provided that CPU, motherboard, and memory are OK. So, adding even a SFF/Mini-ITX will more than double the size of the pile I need to carry. Maybe I'll get an OQO. =)
Mind you, connecting can be a bit of a challenge, and it's been a pain to find all of the gear (EG, a small USB modem with both Mac and PC drivers), but it does make housecalls easier-- and it's mindboggling what you can get away with when you're a techie who makes housecalls.
Anyone know of a NAT router that will share a POTS dialup aside from the Apple Airport Extreme?