Given the amount of TV signals, cell phone signals, microwave Telecom signals, police, fire, ambulance, taxi radios, the cummulatinve radiation of millions of electronic goods, the RF from the power lines themselves, is the addition of a smart meter really going to make a difference? Or is this just a cynical way by people who oppose them to get the public to rally against smart meters.
RO is not like using a traditional filter. I'll see if I can explain it quickly without the explanation getting too muddy. The last RO project I worked on was in 1990 (and wasn't for salt, but same principles apply), but I doubt the basic structure of the equipment has changed much. Probably more changes are in the actual membranes.
On an industrial scale membranes are placed in canisters and usually in large banks of them. The way the canister is built is usually a couple of sheets of membrane, sandwiching a substrate that allows a reasonable liquid flow rate through it, the whole is then spiral wound (like a roll of paper towel), or better yet, like film on a film winder that goes into a film development tank for those who remember film cameras and how to develop negatives:). The edges of the substrate and membranes are attached to a framework such that the purified liquid can be collected and channelled out either one or both ends of the spiral assembly when the assembly is inserted into a properly designed tube/canister. You put the wound membrane assembly in the tube that has one inlet and two or three outlets (depending on whether you want the purified liquid outlets at either end or just one). So say we have one feed outlet and one purified outlet. On the inlet side you flow your feed liquid at high pressure. One of the two outlets is your "purified" liquid and the other is an outlet for feed liquid.
Because of the pressure differential between the feed side of the membrane and the substrate side of it, the "pure" liquid will be forced through and then flow through the substrate and the pure liquid outlet (at a much, much lower flow rate than the pressurized feed liquid). On the feed side of the membrane, this results in a slightly higher concentration as it passes the membrane and thus, the feed outlet side has a higher concentration of solute than the inlet. But you are always maintaining a flow across the membrane at high pressure and what you end up with is the slightly higher concentration liquid flowing out the far end from the inlet. Note that the downstream line from the canister is still under pressure.
So you don't really need to backflush to clean it, or not as often as you might think. You always have a flow of material over the surface in low enough concentration to keep the salt in solution. Granted that sometimes they will chain membrane canisters, the outlet from one going into the next. Or they may have a feedback loop that keeps a set (higher) concentration on the outlet. This reduces the inlet flow and increases the concentration of the output, but it also increases the pressure required. Regardless, the membrane is usually kept from clogging from the movement of the feed.
FWIW, in some systems you might want a certain concentration on the outlet to use as feed for another process. You might be able to use it to concentrate sugars, or even the salt we're talking about. The more water you squeeze out, the less you need to evaporate. But in the case of desalination, I can think of cheaper ways to get salt (like mining), but this serves as an example of what can be done.
For maintenance in some operations (like for example, in the food industry), once the system is shut down, they will run cleaners through the system and if it needs to stay shut down for a period, they'll fill the system with purified water (if water is the output they can use that). They might add a bacterial inhibitor so that nothing could possibly grow and build up in the system. If they don't keep the canisters full of liquid they will dry out and usually become useless. And they are quite expensive.
Pure water is not always what is sought after. Lower pressure RO, usually called ultra filtration has various uses. For instance, I saw one project using it in making raspberry juice. Don't ask me what they were doing with it, I just saw it in passing at a food research place. I was seconded to a research institute in a past life to study using RO to purify waste
Let me help you with that: people who use your software but don't think you should be able to make a profit from your own hard work are called freeloading users. The rest are called contributing users. People who actually complain because someone wants to make a profit from their hard work are called dickheads. The bottom line is that whatever your distribution method, if it is worth it for people to use your software they will use it and pay the cost.
IIRC, the original motivation for GNU was a printer driver that didn't work well with Stallman's printer. He wanted to modify the code and the printer maker wouldn't provide the source. So you would be correct.
Most people don't want to understand how their device works. Nor should they have to. To most people all cookies are hidden because most people don't know what they are, other than occasionally being told they have to allow them for a site to work. And most people don't want to know what they are. They just want their device to work. Most people are not slashdotters. So even pointing them to a web site explaining how to keep everything private is a waste of time. If there is any term that they don't know and is perceived to be computer geekish, their eyes will glaze over and they'll switch back to facebook or twitter... or watching cute kittens dry humping the dog or something equally adorable. Your sentiment is good, but ultimately pointless.
The first thought I had when I saw the title was: how can the mechanics be brought into the 21rst century so you have the cool hippy van but the mechanics will take it on for years. If you address this, taking it from carburetor powered antique power plant to modern, you wouldn't have any problem powering any of the toys you add later. Besides, in a few years if you don't do this, given the efficiency of a 70s era engine, unless you are independently wealthy or win the mega-millions/powerball/etc you will only able to afford enough gas to park it.
Whenever I saw the show Pimp My Ride, I would see this tricked out repainted vehicle at the end, and wonder how far that cool ride will go before a black ball of smoke blows out the back end and it comes to a stop becoming nothing but a large pimped out paper weight. They never tell you if they actually made it safely driveable as well as crammed full of impractical crap.
There was a quote I read once. It said, "morals are only for those that can afford them." Others would argue it is a cultural prerogative. I think it is a bit of both. But I'll say at the start that I think in almost all cases, harming someone else who is minding their business and not harming others is immoral (what constitutes "harming" is another discussion). Eating another person in most if not all modern societies is considered immoral. Killing someone to eat them most certainly. In some parts of the South Pacific up to the 1930s it was considered high humour to invite someone to dinner and not tell them they were dinner (I read this in an interview in the Toronto Star around 25 years ago with an aged man who was one of the last practicing cannibals until he was "converted" by missionaries in the 1930s). On the other hand if we were lost in the Andes and going to die from starvation, an already dead, previously frozen soccer player might go down good. And I believe that most religions would absolve you of it even if they might shun you a bit after. Most people inherently understand morals are based in part on the economics of the situation. Even if they act high and mighty (righteous in truth) when not under pressure.
Fair comment. I wonder how many PETA vegans who develop fibrosis in the lungs will turn down any potential treatment to keep them alive developed from this. That is what the lung transplant girl from Ottawa recently in the news suffered from. I was acquainted with someone who passed away from this. And there were an inordinate amount of workers at a plant in Missouri that made flavouring for microwave popcorn that developed fibrosis in the lungs too. Essentially your lungs get hard like scar tissue and can't flex, and you basically suffocate because you can't draw in enough air. That has to be just as shitty.
On another note, there are a lot of scifi stories where people are immersed in liquid which is super oxygenated in order to combat G-force. I wonder if this new discovery could be used in conjunction with a potential solution to high G-load.
I suspect the economic world would be better off if computerized transactions were banned, and the stock market went back to humans in the bits with paper orders. Then the trades would be made by people and with all likelihood (or hopefully) based on economic and market principles and not on which program can edge in a few billion orders before the other. People and not machines would be able to fathom why the market does what it does. And I bet there would be less likelihood of market meltdowns by the strange sort of race conditions that somehow seem to keep popping up no matter how good their programmers are (and they are good) etc. But the number of times these guys must be changing the programs every week it's a wonder we don't have more of them. People should be trading money and I don't give a shit if you come on my lawn.
Did you learn the expression 'strawman' on slashdot? What the fuck do you think he meant by control? He meant all aspects. Another super literal nitwit heard from.
Why. Dick Cheny will see this as a business opportunity to attract people from cold weather climes. Oh yeah, he and all the other fucktards who cause this will be dead by then.
Singling out software patents would be selfish -- let's fix this for everyone.
One thing at a time. The surest way to make sure nothing gets done is to try to do it all at once. The one thing I can agree on with agile programming is the idea that you do the work in discrete stages because it works better than doing it all at once. If you're any kind of a computer nerd, you'll see and use the analogy. If you are merely spouting a politically correct dogma because it is so kumbaya good to be all inclusive, then you are a lost cause already.
Proprietary security software is an oxymoron -- if the user is not fundamentally in control of the software, the user has no security.
99.999% of the users out there don't know jack shit about how to create a security application. Myself included. (Not the same as at least trying to write an application to prevent security leaks like buffer overflow etc). That said, if the user is fundamentally in control of the software, they are pretty much guaranteed to have no security. I would much rather pay money for a proprietary system written by people who know and understand security and how to create useful security apps.
If free software advocates want to be taken with any sort of credibility they need to stop with this "you can modify the code yourself" claptrap. Almost nobody does this. And nobody who isn't a real and true expert on security should ever do security software on their own. But here we are yet again, another ridiculous espousing that free software is better because you can change it yourself. When in fact, 99.999% of the people can't since they are not programmers and have no intention of being programmers. If this was so important almost every computer using person on the planet would have taken enough programming courses to become competent programmers, they would all be using Linux which would have a 99% market share, and it would run flawlessly because all these amateur programmers would have contributed to make it iron tight.
But surprise surprise, none of that is true. Proprietary systems thrive because people have other things to do than program. They work their own professions and leave programming up to people who have made programming their profession. And they are smart enough to know that they would be very stupid if they tried to program or control their own security programs. So they buy the software from people who know what they're doing. They don't use the free software because it is just too much of a pain in the ass to set up and use. ClamAV? No on access scans or malware detection. And no useful GUI. People don't want to fuck around with stuff to get it to work... they just want it to work.
If you know anything about software you will know that if people can't get a piece of software to easily... EASILY... do the things they need it to, they will use another piece of software or do it by hand. You will notice that most businesses and private users don't use Linux or BSD (aside from the Mac variant). And when they want support they don't want some guy telling them they should modify the program or control it themselves. Or being told by some wet behind the ears barely out of college never mind high school asperger tech wiz that they are lame because they didn't spend 20 hours scouring the internet and screwing with trial and error solutions to solve a problem that doesn't happen on other systems... meanwhile losing 20 hours of the time they needed to do their own job which they are paid for which is not tech support... and having to spend the weekend catching up.
And for the record, I'm writing this on a Firefox web browser, running on Kubuntu 11.10. And this is my primary machine. I keep one Windows 7 Pro box for software that won't run on this one and remote desktop to it (it doesn't even have a monitor attached). So if you want to, like a schmuck, label me some "Windoze" user, go ahead, since you'll be the schmuck. But yes, I am only on this system because my work relates more to server side systems and working on a similar (if aggravating for personal work) system makes sense.
Enhance 224176
Enhance, Stop
Move in, Stop
Pull out, Track right, Stop
Center in, Pull back, Stop
Track 45 right, Stop
Center and Stop
Enhance 34 to 36
Pan right and pull back, Stop
Enhance 34 to 46
Pull back, Wait a minute, Go right, Stop
Enhance 5719
Track 45 left, Stop
Enhance 15 to 23
Give me a hard copy right there.
Saw it when it first came out. Then talked my buddies into seeing it at the IMAX (at the first IMAX ever, called the "Cinesphere" in Toronto) when it played there a couple of months later. Way back when we used to smoke. There weren't many movies like that before, if any. Freaked them out big time. In a good way. And it just gets better with age. I can't believe fucking ET won for best special effects that year. When you look at it today, it looks like the hokey fucking puppet it was.
First, I think gun toting NRA idiots are exactly the kind of people who shouldn't be allowed to vote. The paranoid pea brained that make up their lot are the kind that is harming America the most. "Yeah, I carry a gun to prevent the government from raking over..." fucking retards there. The corporations who are buying the government are far more dangerous.
And I said you don't need a school to become educated. I detest it when people think that school is the only way to become educated. Look up the word autodidact. I know and knew (i.e. since deceased from old age) a number of people who came from very humble means who are over 30 by a fair margin, who I would not hesitate to say are better qualified to vote than a good number of university educated people I know.
Have you ever heard the expression practice makes perfect? It is taken as a truism but it is in fact not true at all. Correct practice makes perfect (it was an old man I met 25 years ago who worked in a pool hall and lived in a single room that clued me in to that... and he is one I would say is qualified to vote for other things he knew). Just because someone chooses to go to university doesn't mean they are any more intelligent than someone who chooses to apprentice for a trade, or the person whose family can't afford to pay for it. And going to university certainly doesn't mean a person learns the things that would help them vote in an informed manner. There are many who don't care to learn any sort of civics. And many are well educated. They are the sort who wouldn't be able to pass a citizenship exam. Look at the number of people going to college that Jay Leno catches in his Jaywalking exercises who can't name important civics items, or as the video I posted showed, either of the two countries bordering America (the woman who answered 'Europe' was in university studying for an education degree... wtf?).
I do the education a disservice by saying 30 years, because it is probably longer than that, that it provided at least the ability to read and write to the vast majority of citizens. And that is all you need to be informed. I know based on my previously mentioned friends. School doesn't really factor into it. You either want to be informed about how your country operates or you do not.
I'm sorry but I think you really need to find a tin foil hat. You use the word disenfranchise entirely too much. It sounds like you are looking for things to disagree with. It also sounds very insulting to those who aren't university educated. To say that only those with what you think of as an education are qualified to vote is very condescending. I don't discriminate that way. I think at least half the people are above average, and I don't think school factors in to whether a person is above average or not. Look at the number of millionaires that never graduated from high school. I don't believe you are as open minded as you think you are. I'm only concerned that people know civics. And I believe most people are capable. You obviously think most people are rubes who are easily fooled. That speaks to a kind of condescending attitude whether you realize it or not. I know a few folks that you probably think would be fooled who would set you straight.
Any citizen of the United States should be able to pass the same test that new immigrants must pass to gain citizenship themselves. Otherwise wouldn't the test be unfair to new immigrants? If a U.S. citizen can 't pass that test it means they can't understand the foundations on which the issues lay. If they can't understand that, whether from not bothering to learn or unable to is moot. It means they aren't qualified. Age has not one iota of bearing on the matter. Despite your/. ID it appears from your comment that you are young and have little regard as to the intelligence of people over 30. If you aren't all that young then shame on you for that ridiculous comment. That in itself doesn't speak well of your cognitive abilities. Do you not realize no president has been even remotely as young as 30 and likely never will. The experience just isn't there for someone so young. And the position requires a great deal of intelligence (GW I believe was intelligent but not wise... they aren't the same thing). Most of the computer age is based on the work of people who are considerably older than 30 now and no, their brains haven't leaked out their ears at age 40 either. Intelligence is not a function of age. Wisdom is a function of age... but as the old saw goes, age doesn't necessarily bring wisdom. I'm really not sure how or why you would think you could factor age into things. It has nothing to do with whether you are motivated enough to be bothered to learn. Contrary to popular belief, you don't need college to understand the issues, only a desire to understand them. And contrary to popular belief, the public schools are good enough to teach the basic skills required to understand the issues. But the public schools are only what the surrounding community allows them to be. If they aren't supported and respected to the point they are ineffective, that is the community's fault. And following, if the young or old of the community encourage that kind of ignorance they deserve to reap what they sow... and shouldn't have a say in matters that affect the wider population until they can prove that can provide useful input. Would you hire someone for a job that signicantly impacts others if they couldn't prove they weren't qualified, but instead hired them because you wanted to be inclusive and fair? Of course not. But besides that point it sounds like you might not hire someone over 30 because you think they've suddenly become stupid. That kind of thinking should disqualify you from being able to vote.
FWIW you need to forgive my diction and lack of paragraphs. I'm writing this on a smart phone... and slashdot commenting isn't very amenable to editing by smart phone. I'm not sure any commenting system is...
I agree that tests should not include matters of faith. All other tests are valid provided the material can be learned. To say a test is unfair because a group has high illiteracy doesn't cut it. Especially in thus case as it is people who aren't informed you are trying to exclude. And face it, if you are illiterate you are highly unlikely to be informed. And unless you are a politically correct moron, you'll realize in it isn't the minority of edge cases you shoot for who are informed and illiterate. There are many examples of minorities coming to America who were poorly educated, couldn't speak English, were essentially illiterate. Take the Vietnamese boat people for example. Within a generation they had reached above levels of literacy and education. While in the past it may have been true that education and literacy could be denied a segment of the population, for at least 30 years this hasn't been true. If a group wants to separate themselves or underachieve, that is their prerogative, but they own the consequences. A major group involved in helping low income and the disadvantaged had a poster with the misquote: "I Has A Dream." Followed by a short editorial making the point that if you want to be a part of society and all it has to offer, you need to able to communicate effectively, and that means a common language and the ability to read and write it. It also means getting an education. Highly disadvantaged segments of society, people new to America who didn't know anything about the place continue to be able to take advantage of what it has to offer and get ahead. All groups have this open to them. In this day and age your argument is no longer valid. If a group is not educated enough to pass a simple test that every immigrant is expected to pass in order to gain citizenship, it is their own fault, no-one else's.
You could require everyone who wants to vote take a citizenship test every decade or so.
But lots of people would get butthurt and cry RACIST!!!!
Why? Most people who fail will probably be people born in the U.S.A. The sad thing is that although we can reasonably assume that when Jay Leno does "Jay-Walking", he only puts the dumbest answers on TV, he is never going to be short of people to find who are that stupid. The video is not all 'JayWalking', at 1:25 it starts addressing who would fail if people had to answer citizenship type questions in order to vote. And definitely most would not be able to cry racist. (FWIW, I will agree that the music during some parts of the video is kind of high in the overly dramatic scale, but the points are valid.)
I do believe people of any country should be able to correctly answer questions about that country in order to vote. It would show they at least have enough on the ball to understand the issues.
Five will get you ten the A/C with the 'cry racist' comment is really scared because he/she wouldn't pass the test.
Slashdot Mirror
RF is just a form of electromagnetic radiation you myopic moron.
Given the amount of TV signals, cell phone signals, microwave Telecom signals, police, fire, ambulance, taxi radios, the cummulatinve radiation of millions of electronic goods, the RF from the power lines themselves, is the addition of a smart meter really going to make a difference? Or is this just a cynical way by people who oppose them to get the public to rally against smart meters.
The canisters don't... it's the membrane and substrate in the canisters that get pooched.
Grow up and move out of your parents basement.
RO is not like using a traditional filter. I'll see if I can explain it quickly without the explanation getting too muddy. The last RO project I worked on was in 1990 (and wasn't for salt, but same principles apply), but I doubt the basic structure of the equipment has changed much. Probably more changes are in the actual membranes.
On an industrial scale membranes are placed in canisters and usually in large banks of them. The way the canister is built is usually a couple of sheets of membrane, sandwiching a substrate that allows a reasonable liquid flow rate through it, the whole is then spiral wound (like a roll of paper towel), or better yet, like film on a film winder that goes into a film development tank for those who remember film cameras and how to develop negatives :). The edges of the substrate and membranes are attached to a framework such that the purified liquid can be collected and channelled out either one or both ends of the spiral assembly when the assembly is inserted into a properly designed tube/canister. You put the wound membrane assembly in the tube that has one inlet and two or three outlets (depending on whether you want the purified liquid outlets at either end or just one). So say we have one feed outlet and one purified outlet. On the inlet side you flow your feed liquid at high pressure. One of the two outlets is your "purified" liquid and the other is an outlet for feed liquid.
Because of the pressure differential between the feed side of the membrane and the substrate side of it, the "pure" liquid will be forced through and then flow through the substrate and the pure liquid outlet (at a much, much lower flow rate than the pressurized feed liquid). On the feed side of the membrane, this results in a slightly higher concentration as it passes the membrane and thus, the feed outlet side has a higher concentration of solute than the inlet. But you are always maintaining a flow across the membrane at high pressure and what you end up with is the slightly higher concentration liquid flowing out the far end from the inlet. Note that the downstream line from the canister is still under pressure.
So you don't really need to backflush to clean it, or not as often as you might think. You always have a flow of material over the surface in low enough concentration to keep the salt in solution. Granted that sometimes they will chain membrane canisters, the outlet from one going into the next. Or they may have a feedback loop that keeps a set (higher) concentration on the outlet. This reduces the inlet flow and increases the concentration of the output, but it also increases the pressure required. Regardless, the membrane is usually kept from clogging from the movement of the feed.
FWIW, in some systems you might want a certain concentration on the outlet to use as feed for another process. You might be able to use it to concentrate sugars, or even the salt we're talking about. The more water you squeeze out, the less you need to evaporate. But in the case of desalination, I can think of cheaper ways to get salt (like mining), but this serves as an example of what can be done.
For maintenance in some operations (like for example, in the food industry), once the system is shut down, they will run cleaners through the system and if it needs to stay shut down for a period, they'll fill the system with purified water (if water is the output they can use that). They might add a bacterial inhibitor so that nothing could possibly grow and build up in the system. If they don't keep the canisters full of liquid they will dry out and usually become useless. And they are quite expensive.
Pure water is not always what is sought after. Lower pressure RO, usually called ultra filtration has various uses. For instance, I saw one project using it in making raspberry juice. Don't ask me what they were doing with it, I just saw it in passing at a food research place. I was seconded to a research institute in a past life to study using RO to purify waste
Let me help you with that: people who use your software but don't think you should be able to make a profit from your own hard work are called freeloading users. The rest are called contributing users. People who actually complain because someone wants to make a profit from their hard work are called dickheads. The bottom line is that whatever your distribution method, if it is worth it for people to use your software they will use it and pay the cost.
IIRC, the original motivation for GNU was a printer driver that didn't work well with Stallman's printer. He wanted to modify the code and the printer maker wouldn't provide the source. So you would be correct.
Most people don't want to understand how their device works. Nor should they have to. To most people all cookies are hidden because most people don't know what they are, other than occasionally being told they have to allow them for a site to work. And most people don't want to know what they are. They just want their device to work. Most people are not slashdotters. So even pointing them to a web site explaining how to keep everything private is a waste of time. If there is any term that they don't know and is perceived to be computer geekish, their eyes will glaze over and they'll switch back to facebook or twitter... or watching cute kittens dry humping the dog or something equally adorable. Your sentiment is good, but ultimately pointless.
s/Might as well right one that's re-usable/Might as well write one that's re-usable/
bwaaaa ha ha ha crankin' the regex police
The first thought I had when I saw the title was: how can the mechanics be brought into the 21rst century so you have the cool hippy van but the mechanics will take it on for years. If you address this, taking it from carburetor powered antique power plant to modern, you wouldn't have any problem powering any of the toys you add later. Besides, in a few years if you don't do this, given the efficiency of a 70s era engine, unless you are independently wealthy or win the mega-millions/powerball/etc you will only able to afford enough gas to park it.
Whenever I saw the show Pimp My Ride, I would see this tricked out repainted vehicle at the end, and wonder how far that cool ride will go before a black ball of smoke blows out the back end and it comes to a stop becoming nothing but a large pimped out paper weight. They never tell you if they actually made it safely driveable as well as crammed full of impractical crap.
How is this a troll?
There was a quote I read once. It said, "morals are only for those that can afford them." Others would argue it is a cultural prerogative. I think it is a bit of both. But I'll say at the start that I think in almost all cases, harming someone else who is minding their business and not harming others is immoral (what constitutes "harming" is another discussion). Eating another person in most if not all modern societies is considered immoral. Killing someone to eat them most certainly. In some parts of the South Pacific up to the 1930s it was considered high humour to invite someone to dinner and not tell them they were dinner (I read this in an interview in the Toronto Star around 25 years ago with an aged man who was one of the last practicing cannibals until he was "converted" by missionaries in the 1930s). On the other hand if we were lost in the Andes and going to die from starvation, an already dead, previously frozen soccer player might go down good. And I believe that most religions would absolve you of it even if they might shun you a bit after. Most people inherently understand morals are based in part on the economics of the situation. Even if they act high and mighty (righteous in truth) when not under pressure.
Fair comment. I wonder how many PETA vegans who develop fibrosis in the lungs will turn down any potential treatment to keep them alive developed from this. That is what the lung transplant girl from Ottawa recently in the news suffered from. I was acquainted with someone who passed away from this. And there were an inordinate amount of workers at a plant in Missouri that made flavouring for microwave popcorn that developed fibrosis in the lungs too. Essentially your lungs get hard like scar tissue and can't flex, and you basically suffocate because you can't draw in enough air. That has to be just as shitty.
On another note, there are a lot of scifi stories where people are immersed in liquid which is super oxygenated in order to combat G-force. I wonder if this new discovery could be used in conjunction with a potential solution to high G-load.
I suspect the economic world would be better off if computerized transactions were banned, and the stock market went back to humans in the bits with paper orders. Then the trades would be made by people and with all likelihood (or hopefully) based on economic and market principles and not on which program can edge in a few billion orders before the other. People and not machines would be able to fathom why the market does what it does. And I bet there would be less likelihood of market meltdowns by the strange sort of race conditions that somehow seem to keep popping up no matter how good their programmers are (and they are good) etc. But the number of times these guys must be changing the programs every week it's a wonder we don't have more of them. People should be trading money and I don't give a shit if you come on my lawn.
Did you learn the expression 'strawman' on slashdot? What the fuck do you think he meant by control? He meant all aspects. Another super literal nitwit heard from.
All this shows is the biotech patents spur biotech companies, not more actual biotech.
Why. Dick Cheny will see this as a business opportunity to attract people from cold weather climes. Oh yeah, he and all the other fucktards who cause this will be dead by then.
One thing at a time. The surest way to make sure nothing gets done is to try to do it all at once. The one thing I can agree on with agile programming is the idea that you do the work in discrete stages because it works better than doing it all at once. If you're any kind of a computer nerd, you'll see and use the analogy. If you are merely spouting a politically correct dogma because it is so kumbaya good to be all inclusive, then you are a lost cause already.
99.999% of the users out there don't know jack shit about how to create a security application. Myself included. (Not the same as at least trying to write an application to prevent security leaks like buffer overflow etc). That said, if the user is fundamentally in control of the software, they are pretty much guaranteed to have no security. I would much rather pay money for a proprietary system written by people who know and understand security and how to create useful security apps.
If free software advocates want to be taken with any sort of credibility they need to stop with this "you can modify the code yourself" claptrap. Almost nobody does this. And nobody who isn't a real and true expert on security should ever do security software on their own. But here we are yet again, another ridiculous espousing that free software is better because you can change it yourself. When in fact, 99.999% of the people can't since they are not programmers and have no intention of being programmers. If this was so important almost every computer using person on the planet would have taken enough programming courses to become competent programmers, they would all be using Linux which would have a 99% market share, and it would run flawlessly because all these amateur programmers would have contributed to make it iron tight.
But surprise surprise, none of that is true. Proprietary systems thrive because people have other things to do than program. They work their own professions and leave programming up to people who have made programming their profession. And they are smart enough to know that they would be very stupid if they tried to program or control their own security programs. So they buy the software from people who know what they're doing. They don't use the free software because it is just too much of a pain in the ass to set up and use. ClamAV? No on access scans or malware detection. And no useful GUI. People don't want to fuck around with stuff to get it to work... they just want it to work.
If you know anything about software you will know that if people can't get a piece of software to easily... EASILY... do the things they need it to, they will use another piece of software or do it by hand. You will notice that most businesses and private users don't use Linux or BSD (aside from the Mac variant). And when they want support they don't want some guy telling them they should modify the program or control it themselves. Or being told by some wet behind the ears barely out of college never mind high school asperger tech wiz that they are lame because they didn't spend 20 hours scouring the internet and screwing with trial and error solutions to solve a problem that doesn't happen on other systems... meanwhile losing 20 hours of the time they needed to do their own job which they are paid for which is not tech support... and having to spend the weekend catching up.
And for the record, I'm writing this on a Firefox web browser, running on Kubuntu 11.10. And this is my primary machine. I keep one Windows 7 Pro box for software that won't run on this one and remote desktop to it (it doesn't even have a monitor attached). So if you want to, like a schmuck, label me some "Windoze" user, go ahead, since you'll be the schmuck. But yes, I am only on this system because my work relates more to server side systems and working on a similar (if aggravating for personal work) system makes sense.
Obligatory:
Enhance 224176
Enhance, Stop
Move in, Stop
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Give me a hard copy right there.
Saw it when it first came out. Then talked my buddies into seeing it at the IMAX (at the first IMAX ever, called the "Cinesphere" in Toronto) when it played there a couple of months later. Way back when we used to smoke. There weren't many movies like that before, if any. Freaked them out big time. In a good way. And it just gets better with age. I can't believe fucking ET won for best special effects that year. When you look at it today, it looks like the hokey fucking puppet it was.
First, I think gun toting NRA idiots are exactly the kind of people who shouldn't be allowed to vote. The paranoid pea brained that make up their lot are the kind that is harming America the most. "Yeah, I carry a gun to prevent the government from raking over..." fucking retards there. The corporations who are buying the government are far more dangerous.
And I said you don't need a school to become educated. I detest it when people think that school is the only way to become educated. Look up the word autodidact. I know and knew (i.e. since deceased from old age) a number of people who came from very humble means who are over 30 by a fair margin, who I would not hesitate to say are better qualified to vote than a good number of university educated people I know.
Have you ever heard the expression practice makes perfect? It is taken as a truism but it is in fact not true at all. Correct practice makes perfect (it was an old man I met 25 years ago who worked in a pool hall and lived in a single room that clued me in to that ... and he is one I would say is qualified to vote for other things he knew). Just because someone chooses to go to university doesn't mean they are any more intelligent than someone who chooses to apprentice for a trade, or the person whose family can't afford to pay for it. And going to university certainly doesn't mean a person learns the things that would help them vote in an informed manner. There are many who don't care to learn any sort of civics. And many are well educated. They are the sort who wouldn't be able to pass a citizenship exam. Look at the number of people going to college that Jay Leno catches in his Jaywalking exercises who can't name important civics items, or as the video I posted showed, either of the two countries bordering America (the woman who answered 'Europe' was in university studying for an education degree... wtf?).
I do the education a disservice by saying 30 years, because it is probably longer than that, that it provided at least the ability to read and write to the vast majority of citizens. And that is all you need to be informed. I know based on my previously mentioned friends. School doesn't really factor into it. You either want to be informed about how your country operates or you do not.
I'm sorry but I think you really need to find a tin foil hat. You use the word disenfranchise entirely too much. It sounds like you are looking for things to disagree with. It also sounds very insulting to those who aren't university educated. To say that only those with what you think of as an education are qualified to vote is very condescending. I don't discriminate that way. I think at least half the people are above average, and I don't think school factors in to whether a person is above average or not. Look at the number of millionaires that never graduated from high school. I don't believe you are as open minded as you think you are. I'm only concerned that people know civics. And I believe most people are capable. You obviously think most people are rubes who are easily fooled. That speaks to a kind of condescending attitude whether you realize it or not. I know a few folks that you probably think would be fooled who would set you straight.
Regards.
Any citizen of the United States should be able to pass the same test that new immigrants must pass to gain citizenship themselves. Otherwise wouldn't the test be unfair to new immigrants? If a U.S. citizen can 't pass that test it means they can't understand the foundations on which the issues lay. If they can't understand that, whether from not bothering to learn or unable to is moot. It means they aren't qualified. Age has not one iota of bearing on the matter. Despite your /. ID it appears from your comment that you are young and have little regard as to the intelligence of people over 30. If you aren't all that young then shame on you for that ridiculous comment. That in itself doesn't speak well of your cognitive abilities. Do you not realize no president has been even remotely as young as 30 and likely never will. The experience just isn't there for someone so young. And the position requires a great deal of intelligence (GW I believe was intelligent but not wise... they aren't the same thing). Most of the computer age is based on the work of people who are considerably older than 30 now and no, their brains haven't leaked out their ears at age 40 either. Intelligence is not a function of age. Wisdom is a function of age... but as the old saw goes, age doesn't necessarily bring wisdom. I'm really not sure how or why you would think you could factor age into things. It has nothing to do with whether you are motivated enough to be bothered to learn. Contrary to popular belief, you don't need college to understand the issues, only a desire to understand them. And contrary to popular belief, the public schools are good enough to teach the basic skills required to understand the issues. But the public schools are only what the surrounding community allows them to be. If they aren't supported and respected to the point they are ineffective, that is the community's fault. And following, if the young or old of the community encourage that kind of ignorance they deserve to reap what they sow... and shouldn't have a say in matters that affect the wider population until they can prove that can provide useful input. Would you hire someone for a job that signicantly impacts others if they couldn't prove they weren't qualified, but instead hired them because you wanted to be inclusive and fair? Of course not. But besides that point it sounds like you might not hire someone over 30 because you think they've suddenly become stupid. That kind of thinking should disqualify you from being able to vote.
FWIW you need to forgive my diction and lack of paragraphs. I'm writing this on a smart phone... and slashdot commenting isn't very amenable to editing by smart phone. I'm not sure any commenting system is...
I agree that tests should not include matters of faith. All other tests are valid provided the material can be learned. To say a test is unfair because a group has high illiteracy doesn't cut it. Especially in thus case as it is people who aren't informed you are trying to exclude. And face it, if you are illiterate you are highly unlikely to be informed. And unless you are a politically correct moron, you'll realize in it isn't the minority of edge cases you shoot for who are informed and illiterate. There are many examples of minorities coming to America who were poorly educated, couldn't speak English, were essentially illiterate. Take the Vietnamese boat people for example. Within a generation they had reached above levels of literacy and education. While in the past it may have been true that education and literacy could be denied a segment of the population, for at least 30 years this hasn't been true. If a group wants to separate themselves or underachieve, that is their prerogative, but they own the consequences. A major group involved in helping low income and the disadvantaged had a poster with the misquote: "I Has A Dream." Followed by a short editorial making the point that if you want to be a part of society and all it has to offer, you need to able to communicate effectively, and that means a common language and the ability to read and write it. It also means getting an education. Highly disadvantaged segments of society, people new to America who didn't know anything about the place continue to be able to take advantage of what it has to offer and get ahead. All groups have this open to them. In this day and age your argument is no longer valid. If a group is not educated enough to pass a simple test that every immigrant is expected to pass in order to gain citizenship, it is their own fault, no-one else's.
Why? Most people who fail will probably be people born in the U.S.A. The sad thing is that although we can reasonably assume that when Jay Leno does "Jay-Walking", he only puts the dumbest answers on TV, he is never going to be short of people to find who are that stupid. The video is not all 'JayWalking', at 1:25 it starts addressing who would fail if people had to answer citizenship type questions in order to vote. And definitely most would not be able to cry racist. (FWIW, I will agree that the music during some parts of the video is kind of high in the overly dramatic scale, but the points are valid.)
I do believe people of any country should be able to correctly answer questions about that country in order to vote. It would show they at least have enough on the ball to understand the issues.
Five will get you ten the A/C with the 'cry racist' comment is really scared because he/she wouldn't pass the test.