...issuing double-barrelled shotguns to kill malaria-infested mosquitos.
While it might work on some level, I find it unlikely that the alpaca-smuggling industry is going to be crippled by these measures. All the smuggler has to do is get his hands on a scanner, find the implant, and remove it. Or, if he's not particularly concerned about being able to sell the Alpaca on the white market, just ignore the thing altogether. I doubt the buyers will mind.
I was referring to the age of the design model. The telephone system in most of the United States, especially the northeast, was designed and implemented nearly a century before large-scale data transfer became de rigeur for pretty much any serious business. That level of technology was never intended to transfer large amounts of information, so the technologies that use it for that purpose (I.E., DSL) are approaching the hard engineering limits imposed by the system's underlying design principles.
There's a marked difference between the bandwidth a given line is physically capable of supporting, and the bandwidth your provider is actually prepared to give you.
With DSL, the closer you are to the CO, the higher your theoretical maximum bandwidth. But, in order to maintain consistency of service, DSL providers give everyone a speed that is determined to work all the way up to the maximum theoretical distance limit for DSL.
Cable doesn't quite work this way, for a few reasons. First, the cable TV system in the US is a fairly new network, meaning that the infrastructure itself is generally of higher quality. This is what allows cable to offer speeds superior to DSL. Second, a cable signal, being a much more powerful signal than DSL, and nearly always running on shielded lines, doesn't deteriorate near as badly over distance. Cable providers' bandwidth limits are purely marketing-driven, and don't come anywhere near the physical limits of the cable connection.
Presumably any government regulation would require the cable provider to sell the third-party ISPs as much bandwidth as they wanted, meaning that if you were willing to foot the bill, you could max out the physical capabilities of the cable network, which is probably somewhere close to LAN speed in most places.
Would be nice if they made the.torrent file available, so you can download it with any BitTorrent client, instead of their proprietary downloader. Not that Blizzard isn't a reliable company, but I just don't trust downloaders in general.
That being said, I wonder how long it'll take for someone to back-engineer the Blizzard downloader and turn it into a regular BitTorrent client =)
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
Sara Teasdale
You're thinking of SCUBA diving, in which the diver is breathing air at a pressure equal to the surrounding water pressure.
At such high pressures, the nitrogen concentration in the air increases dramatically, thereby increasing the nitrogen level in the blood to the point of supersaturation.
When the pressure is relieved during decompression, the supersaturated state can no longer be maintained, and the excess nitrogen begins to evaporate out of the blood, causing bubbles.
In a spacesuit or spacecraft, the atmosphere is usually kept somewhere below normal atmospheric pressure, to reduce strain on the hull. The blood never becomes saturated with nitrogen, so any decompression sudden enough to potentially cause the nitrogen to evaporate would probably burst the blood vessels first.
As to your what if, remember that in order for a gas to dissolve in a liquid, it must be under pressure. If you attempt to reduce atmospheric pressure to zero, any gas becomes insoluble in any liquid. So in order for the lungs to function properly, you'd have to supply oxygen at or near normal atmospheric pressure.
Of course, when you do so, you're creating a volume of air inside the body of much greater pressure than the surrounding environment, which would eventually result in the chest cavity exploding.
Remember also that there are many, many small airspaces scattered throughout the human body, and not all of them are easily vented. Even if you decreased the pressure very slowly, the subject would still be subjected to extreme pain as these airspaces expand and try to ventilate. It would literally be like someone sticking a fire hose up your ass and opening the valve.
Actually, most of the ATMs in restaurants and convenience stores are rented, not owned, and are designed differently that standard ATMs, in that the cash bin is totally separate from all the other internals, and uses a separate key. These rental companies provide the machine, the maintenance, and access to their processing network.
Most companies skip the 'rental' part entirely, and just pay you a small monthly fee, just to have the machine in your store, and they take care of all operation and maintenance, including cash handling and processing. Basically they're renting the space in your store, rather than you renting the machine, in which case you don't get a key to the machine or anything, and if you try to tamper with the machine in any way, the company will terminate your contract and probably try to prosecute you.
The whole point of a system like this is that it requires ZERO internal alterations to the ATM system, and therefore, ZERO access to said internals.
Even if you could somehow gain access to the ATM's internals to install such a device, you'd probably be better off just grabbing the cash straight out of the ATM.
Given the current state of debris in orbit, I wonder how long it will be until a capsule is struck by a dangerously large piece of matter, scattering ashes throughout low earth orbit.
Extended Internet use is just like extended use of anything else. There's a point at which it becomes excessive and harmful. But given the user-controlled nature of the Internet, I don't see how anything less than a pathological obsession therewith could cause true physiological harm (couchpotatoitis notwithstanding)
As US law stands, states collect no tax whatsoever from interstate commerce - not even income tax.
Section 381.
This looks like an attempt by the states to make an end run around existing commerce laws and snag a slice of the interstate commerce pie.
I'd like for this to never make it past the House, but given the current economic problems plaguing most states it'll probably get shoved through. With any luck, it will be challenged and declared unconstititional.
btw, IANAL, so if my interpretation of the above law is flawed, flame away~
One of the major reasons someone incorporates a company is because, under American law, a corporation does in fact have many of the rights normally reserved to a human citizen. Corporations can sue and be sued, own property, etc.
IANAL so I don't know exactly how far these rights go, but I would presume that some measure of 1st amendment protection is granted to a corporation.
However, I believe that the free speech provision of the 1st amendment was primarily intended to prevent government control over communications conducted through primarily public channels, i.e. news media, and that a privately-owned telephone line does not fall within the scope of 1st amendment protections.
An idea that I've been toying with, since I used to get a lot of sales calls, is using CallerID to identify the companies calling me, and billing them for using my phone line for commercial purposes without my consent.
Fatman~
Slashdot Mirror
...issuing double-barrelled shotguns to kill malaria-infested mosquitos. While it might work on some level, I find it unlikely that the alpaca-smuggling industry is going to be crippled by these measures. All the smuggler has to do is get his hands on a scanner, find the implant, and remove it. Or, if he's not particularly concerned about being able to sell the Alpaca on the white market, just ignore the thing altogether. I doubt the buyers will mind.
Not our cards. That's an ATM DS-3 card, and Verizon uses only frame relay on the east coast.
A grenade would work well in this situation.
I was referring to the age of the design model. The telephone system in most of the United States, especially the northeast, was designed and implemented nearly a century before large-scale data transfer became de rigeur for pretty much any serious business. That level of technology was never intended to transfer large amounts of information, so the technologies that use it for that purpose (I.E., DSL) are approaching the hard engineering limits imposed by the system's underlying design principles.
There's a marked difference between the bandwidth a given line is physically capable of supporting, and the bandwidth your provider is actually prepared to give you.
With DSL, the closer you are to the CO, the higher your theoretical maximum bandwidth. But, in order to maintain consistency of service, DSL providers give everyone a speed that is determined to work all the way up to the maximum theoretical distance limit for DSL.
Cable doesn't quite work this way, for a few reasons. First, the cable TV system in the US is a fairly new network, meaning that the infrastructure itself is generally of higher quality. This is what allows cable to offer speeds superior to DSL. Second, a cable signal, being a much more powerful signal than DSL, and nearly always running on shielded lines, doesn't deteriorate near as badly over distance. Cable providers' bandwidth limits are purely marketing-driven, and don't come anywhere near the physical limits of the cable connection.
Presumably any government regulation would require the cable provider to sell the third-party ISPs as much bandwidth as they wanted, meaning that if you were willing to foot the bill, you could max out the physical capabilities of the cable network, which is probably somewhere close to LAN speed in most places.
Would be nice if they made the .torrent file available, so you can download it with any BitTorrent client, instead of their proprietary downloader. Not that Blizzard isn't a reliable company, but I just don't trust downloaders in general.
That being said, I wonder how long it'll take for someone to back-engineer the Blizzard downloader and turn it into a regular BitTorrent client =)
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound; And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum trees in tremulous white; Robins will wear their feathery fire, Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire; And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done. Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, If mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn Would scarcely know that we were gone. Sara Teasdale
You're thinking of SCUBA diving, in which the diver is breathing air at a pressure equal to the surrounding water pressure. At such high pressures, the nitrogen concentration in the air increases dramatically, thereby increasing the nitrogen level in the blood to the point of supersaturation. When the pressure is relieved during decompression, the supersaturated state can no longer be maintained, and the excess nitrogen begins to evaporate out of the blood, causing bubbles. In a spacesuit or spacecraft, the atmosphere is usually kept somewhere below normal atmospheric pressure, to reduce strain on the hull. The blood never becomes saturated with nitrogen, so any decompression sudden enough to potentially cause the nitrogen to evaporate would probably burst the blood vessels first. As to your what if, remember that in order for a gas to dissolve in a liquid, it must be under pressure. If you attempt to reduce atmospheric pressure to zero, any gas becomes insoluble in any liquid. So in order for the lungs to function properly, you'd have to supply oxygen at or near normal atmospheric pressure. Of course, when you do so, you're creating a volume of air inside the body of much greater pressure than the surrounding environment, which would eventually result in the chest cavity exploding. Remember also that there are many, many small airspaces scattered throughout the human body, and not all of them are easily vented. Even if you decreased the pressure very slowly, the subject would still be subjected to extreme pain as these airspaces expand and try to ventilate. It would literally be like someone sticking a fire hose up your ass and opening the valve.
Actually, most of the ATMs in restaurants and convenience stores are rented, not owned, and are designed differently that standard ATMs, in that the cash bin is totally separate from all the other internals, and uses a separate key. These rental companies provide the machine, the maintenance, and access to their processing network. Most companies skip the 'rental' part entirely, and just pay you a small monthly fee, just to have the machine in your store, and they take care of all operation and maintenance, including cash handling and processing. Basically they're renting the space in your store, rather than you renting the machine, in which case you don't get a key to the machine or anything, and if you try to tamper with the machine in any way, the company will terminate your contract and probably try to prosecute you.
The whole point of a system like this is that it requires ZERO internal alterations to the ATM system, and therefore, ZERO access to said internals. Even if you could somehow gain access to the ATM's internals to install such a device, you'd probably be better off just grabbing the cash straight out of the ATM.
Given the current state of debris in orbit, I wonder how long it will be until a capsule is struck by a dangerously large piece of matter, scattering ashes throughout low earth orbit.
Any bets?
In a manner of speaking =)
Extended Internet use is just like extended use of anything else. There's a point at which it becomes excessive and harmful. But given the user-controlled nature of the Internet, I don't see how anything less than a pathological obsession therewith could cause true physiological harm (couchpotatoitis notwithstanding)
As US law stands, states collect no tax whatsoever from interstate commerce - not even income tax. Section 381. This looks like an attempt by the states to make an end run around existing commerce laws and snag a slice of the interstate commerce pie. I'd like for this to never make it past the House, but given the current economic problems plaguing most states it'll probably get shoved through. With any luck, it will be challenged and declared unconstititional. btw, IANAL, so if my interpretation of the above law is flawed, flame away~
One of the major reasons someone incorporates a company is because, under American law, a corporation does in fact have many of the rights normally reserved to a human citizen. Corporations can sue and be sued, own property, etc. IANAL so I don't know exactly how far these rights go, but I would presume that some measure of 1st amendment protection is granted to a corporation. However, I believe that the free speech provision of the 1st amendment was primarily intended to prevent government control over communications conducted through primarily public channels, i.e. news media, and that a privately-owned telephone line does not fall within the scope of 1st amendment protections. An idea that I've been toying with, since I used to get a lot of sales calls, is using CallerID to identify the companies calling me, and billing them for using my phone line for commercial purposes without my consent. Fatman~