All appropriations bills originate in the House. Bills in the House get scheduled by the Rules Committee. The majority party in the House controls the operation of all commitees by appointing the chairman of each commitee, and having a majority of members on every committee (except the Ethics committee which must be even).
The specific legislation referred to in this thread was called the "Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1981", which was HR 3982 (It was introduced by a Republican)
The Bill passed in the House 232-193 (which means at least 40 Dems voted for it)
The Bill was agreed to by the Senate by voice vote.... when the bill came back from the conference committee, the Senate had a roll call vote, and agreed to the bill 80-14.
In the 1980 election, the Democrats lost a net of 12 Senators and lost control of the Senate. Ronald Reagan had defeated Jimmy Carter by winning 44 states.
Democrats in DC perhaps were stunned by Americans voting "Truth to Power" and were too scared of their own shadows to take on Ronald Reagan's legislative agenda - but they still had control of the House and could have stopped it.
Add me to the list, although a slightly different problem...
My web site does a 302 redirect to launch the appropriate media player via the web browser (WMP,.mp3, m3u, Quicktime, RealPlayer, etc...)
The problem with IE7 is that if the URI is an mms:// type (Micosoft Multimedia Streaming)
Example: mms://64.92.199.74/KPAM-AM
(KPAM is a news/talk radio station in Portland, Oregon)
If you do a 302 redirect to that location:, you get a DNS "Server not found" error, which is extremely odd, since that URI does not contain a domain name, so no DNS lookup should be necessary.
In more detail, if you have a copy of IE7, click on this link:
I don't see anything odd that I've done wrong - this works on IE6 and all other browsers. All 230 stations using mms:// URIs fail. Putting the mms:// link directly into the browser, they work.
If this flaw isn't fixed by the time IE7 ships, I'll have to redirect the visitors away from MMS streams to other stream types (mostly m3u/pls mp3 playlists). MMS has definite advantages like adaptive playback speeds, automatic protocol support detection that make it useful when it works. Since MMS is Microsoft's streaming server software, this is a big puzzle to me why they haven't caught this in testing. I could see the anti-phishing filter being the explanation, but stating a workaround doesn't get the bugs fixed.
It seems possible that the reports that the test was much smaller than expected may be an indication that the North Koreans don't quite figure how to make an -effective- nuclear explosion. Anything US Intelligence would say in public about why their test failed and/or how we know if it failed would only serve to provide information to the North Koreans to improve their next test.
Knowing that something is possible is half way to knowing how to do it.
There have been many recent examples of when a single Federal judge has "decided" that some law passed by the State Legislature or Congress is "Unconstitutional" based on very little more than the judge's desired outcome.
IANAL, but to stop the low level District Court judges from violating the seperation of powers principle and creating legal chaos, something needs to be done to limit the ability of a single unelected judge from overriding the entire legislative branch.... perhaps Congress limiting the jurisidiction (which is has the power to do written in the Constitution) that for a law passed by a legislature (or actions of the executive branch) to be overruled by the courts that the ruling must come from the full Appeals Court, and that there should be a presumption that the other two branches are -not- violating the Constitution until convincingly proven otherwise in either a full District Court or the Supreme Court.
Revised estimates are that ozone levels won't be back to "normal" over Antartica until 2065.
The reason the hole appears to have grown to a record size this season was unusually *cold* tempereratures in the stratosphere this winter (winter in the Southern Hemisphere, that is). Surely a cold stratosphere is proof of the existance of man made global warming!
Now this information puts forth the idea that cooler strophosphere temperatures are *due* to ozone depletion, not caused by it... and that CO2 levels are also responsible. Ignore the two big red spikes when major volcanic eruptions occurred. Data points like that are not relevant to computing average values or trends - they just tend to make computer models produce strange predictions.
That the esimates in the models were off by 40 to 70% of what would happen to the temperature of the trophosphere because of "contamination" of the data from the strophosphere data.
Take a visit to the closest east/west rail line and note the frequency, speed and priority of the container trains with Asian markings. Those containers are mostly making the transit from West Coast ports to destinations in Europe, not for internal US consumption (something overlooked on the entire Dubai ports controversy). This "Land Bridge" saves enough in transit time to more than offset the additional costs of unloading and reloading the containers from/to container ships.
To transport all of those Asian prduced goods to the EU across 3000 miles (5000 km) of the continental US is adding an insignificant amount to the US GDP. The containers pass through the country are sealed and neither imports nor exports - the only effect on GDP is the shipping charges - while consuming relatively large amounts of petroleum-based energy (and releasing the dreaded poison carbon dioxide in addition!).
I propose in the spirit of equity and fairness and preservation of the global environment that all Asia to EU shipping return to being directed instead through the Panama or Suez canals, or around the Cape of Good Hope in order to harmonize the world's energy consumption. So what if if the next version of the PlayStation doesn't arrive in the EU for an extra 60 days? It's worth the sacrifice to protect the future, wouldn't you agree?
Of course, if we head down the path of "We must inspect 100% of all containers that enter the US", we'll arrive at the same conclusion, just for different reasons.
This is a really rough idea, but I'll lob it out for some thought (and release all future IP claims)... I might even be similar to IM2000, which I haven't read about
How about evolving email to a P2P application where the email never passes through any ISP's computer... and transfer the email over an encrypted channel. Using a central directory something similar to DNS, if you wanted to send an email to john.doe@isp123.com, you would query to get back the IP address of the computer (or maybe something more clever to hide the recipient from the sender).. that is handling email for him. The sender would have to identify itself for approval to permit the recipient to manage which senders they wish to receive email from and under what conditions... having a simple reliable method to determine how long the sender has been registered would greatly limit hit-and-run spammers.
This is not a server at isp123.com (although it could be a proxy or intermediary for corporate mail or computers not normally online)... an IP address and encryption key is returned.... the sender connects to the IP address, an encryption key exchange takes place - once the mutual key exchange and authentication takes place, the email is sent by the sender. If the recipient's computer is offline or ignores the connection request, the sender adds it to its polling queue and tries later.
The value added by SMTP was back in the old days when bandwidth was expensive, email was often delayed to be sent via UUCP overnight, international circuits were hugely expensive and small, and most client computers (and many email servers) could not be assumed to be online 24/7. Those guiding principles are no longer true.
There is significant evidence that IMs and SMS messaging are largely displacing what people used to use email for - especially in the under 25 group. Email might be a problem that doesn't need a solution.
As a fellow Libertarian, do you see government having any role is making sure that the operators of gambling establishments are running an honest game? Or that they disclose the house's "take" on things like slot machines? Should the revenue from casinos be taxed?
Especially on the Internet, where there is no physical place of business, and all of the win/lose decisions are being made by computer code, the potential for fraud is enormous. (where is the cry for a paper audit trail because we can't trust the software?)
When someone claims a casino stole their money, is their any role for the government to get involved in the dispute? If the government had no jursidiction over the casino, it lacks the information to know what happened and why. Even if there are laws, a government has no jurisdiction outside of its borders.
If the government doesn't regulate an activity up front, yet people demand that it solve the problems the lack of regulation has created - then we wind up where we are now... Most people do seem to want government to "protect" them, even at the cost of giving up their personal freedoms. This is what governments do (see: State of Fear, Michael Chricton 2004)
In summary, it looks like the money funnelled through Jack Abramoff and other lobbyists paid off.
Do the mechanical lever voting machines in use for about a hundred years produce a paper audit trail of each vote? (the requirement that suddenly seems to be the de facto standard of an accurate vote counting process)
Wasn't the push for "We need to have electronic voting machines so this never happens again" pushed by the Democrats and Civil Rights groups following the 2000 election because their voters were "confused" by the butterly "paper" punch card ballots (that happened to be designed by the Democrats in those counties in Florida with the alleged irregularities)...
I'll start to listen to Robert (puff puff) Kennedy about honest elections when he acknowledges what happened in the 1960 presidential election in Cook County, Illinois... (he has a show on Air America called Ring of Fire on the weekends if you want to hear his voice directly)
Personally, I have no problem with paper ballots - technology is not the solution to every problem. The opposing argument (and the one enforced by the new HAVA law) is that the voting system must catch and correct voting mistakes - like voting for 2 people for president by mistake... with mechanical voting machines, that is a non-issue as the machine has a mechanical block that prevents over-voting.... only punch card or paper ballots have that issue... hence the claim by the electronic machine makers that there are very few votes with errors... Some people tend to assume that if a voter didn't vote for anyone on the ballot for an office that this was a "mistake" or that the person must have "meant" to vote for their candidate, but was "confused". Perhaps not.
Back during the 2004 debates, President Bush was hit with the question to name 3 mistakes he had made. He offered up only a vague answer that he might have picked different people for some of his appointments.
More than anything, this Washington Post rambling chronology (story?) screams very loudly at one of George Bushs's largest mistakes - letting George Tenet (and Richard Clarke) stay on from the Clinton administration. At least in part, I believe the reason Condoleeza and Rumsfeld did not do what they wanted was because she didn't trust their judgement. Colin Powell and his buddy Richard Armitage are surely on that list now, too.
For those who skipped reading the article, here are some of the "on one hand, and then on the other hand" qualifiers to the central assertion:
"Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser"
Note that in July, 2001, Condoleeza Rice was the "Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs" - which while it is an important position, did not make her part of the Cabinet. The National Security advisor is just that - a staff advisor to the President heading the national security council. The Director of the CIA and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are "statutory advisors", but -not- members of that council . Just to remind you that now she is the Secretary of State - and not to confuse those two roles. http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-1.htm (that is the order where Ms Rice reforms the NSC under her management)
"For months, Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy, including specific presidential orders called "findings" that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden."
Unless I wasn't listening clearly, former President Clinton has stated that he did *sign* a finding specifically authorizing the CIA to kill (not just capture) Bin Laden. When? Is there any proof of that? Why wasn't it carried out? Is Bob Woodward fact checking this for his next book deal?
Well, ask Richard Clarke, the now authority on all such matters:
"Clarke told me that in the mid-nineties "the C.I.A. was authorized to mount operations to go into Afghanistan and apprehend bin Laden." President Clinton, Clarke said, "was really gung-ho" about the scenario. "He had no hesitations," he said. "But the C.I.A. had hesitations. They didn't want their own people killed. And they didn't want their shortcomings exposed. They really didn't have the paramilitary capability to do it; they could not stage a snatch operation." Instead of trying to mount the operation themselves, Clarke said, "the C.I.A. basically paid a bunch of local Afghans, who went in and did nothing."
Continuing with the Post story...
"Two weeks earlier, he [George Tenet] had told Richard A. Clarke, the National Security Council's counterterrorism director: "It's my sixth sense, but I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one."
In writing? Any recording? Any proof? What did he mean by "it"?
"On June 30, a top-secret senior executive intelligence brief contained an article headlined "Bin Laden Threats Are Real.""
Hmmm... "top secret"? That has a specific meaning in government circles - beyond comic book characters. Should we look for the NY Times to be leaking this document before the upcoming election?
"Tenet [...] had two main points when they met with her [Rice]. First, al-Qaeda was going to attack American interests, possibly in the United States itself."
-possibly-
This is not news. Everyone agreed that he probably was going to do something somewhere at some time.
"Black emphasized that this amounted to a strategic warning, meaning the prob
And a tip to the Microsoft Internet Explorer team - adding the current site to the Trusted Zone whitelist should be a matter of one click or possibly one HotKey.... not opening up multiple levels of windows and having to type the URL in by hand... and done in such a way that it is impossible for some flaw in the browser or future expoit to do via scripting...
How is this handled in MSIE 7.0? Anyone know?
(I had MSIE 7.0 beta, but uninstalled it after a couple days because it broke 302 redirects of mms:// URIs, and the buggy or non-intuitive way it selects items in a drop-down list - my report in the support group generated the typical "I didn't actually read what you said, but I'm sure this isn't a problem" response)
So they'll get to have a flurry of hotfixes and service packs to fix the 7.0 version when it winds up on people's desktop one morning and breaks all kinds of stuff in important places....
What is the purpose of a beta test with users, anyhow?
One of the points mentioned in the article is the current version of satellites are potentially vulnerable to blinding because they are in predictable orbits.
A spy telescope on the Moon would be fairly useless, as half of the world would always be outside of its view (on a pretty predictable pattern), and the telescope would have serious problems any time it was looking towards the earth and the sun is behind the earth (at the point of the full moon and probably for several days on either side).
One on Mars would be even more impractical. Mars would often be in its orbit behind the sun (as viewed from the Earth or vice versa)... At minimum distance with no solar issues, pictures would probably be at the resolution to be able to pick out Lake Michigan, not see what the license place number is on the embassy car parked outside of the building at the uranium mine in Niger.
Or the even more obvious - "I didn't know I couldn't install my copy of Office on every computer I own. I thought it was a license for me, not that I have to buy one for each computer."
My copy of Office XP purchased at the same time as my computer (2002) suddenly came to life and demanded to be authenticated. I still have the original CD (which I don't remember it even asking for)... but you can bet if I tried now to install it on a second computer, it has every right to complain profusely.
Is it normal for a gas station / food mart surveillance camera to pan by itself following one individual as he walks across the parking lot and wanders around the store? or did CNN digitally enhance the video?
Since the "news" story mentions that this ATM was in this condition for days (dispensing 20s for 5s to everyone) until an "honest" person told the store, how do they know this was the person who actually did something to the machine? Or that it wasn't a setup mistake made by the store operator? or a malicioous act by a former employee? or an insurance scam by the store owner?
And people in the news business wonder why people don't trust them any more.
Do you think if we rapidly built 1,360 (or 650 or 390) new nuclear reactors and bring them online in 10 years - that this would have an effect on the price of uranium ore (and the related assumptions about how much electricity $9 would buy)? Would China also do the same?
Unlicensed operation on the AM and FM radio broadcast bands is permitted for some extremely low powered devices covered under Part 15 of the FCC's rules. On FM frequencies, these devices are limited to an effective service range of approximately 200 feet (61 meters). See 47 CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) Section 15.239, and the July 24, 1991 Public Notice. On the AM broadcast band, these devices are limited to an effective service range of approximately 200 feet (61 meters). See 47 CFR Sections 15.207, 15.209, 15.219, and 15.221. These devices must accept any interference caused by any other operation, which may further limit the effective service range. For more information on Part 15 devices, please see OET Bulletin No. 63 ("Understanding the FCC Regulations for Low-Power, Non-Licensed Transmitters"). Questions not answered by this Bulletin can be directed to the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology, Customer Service Branch, at the Columbia, Maryland office, phone (301) - 362 - 3000, e-mail LabHelp@fcc.gov.
To obtain a low power FM License, it must be owned by a non-profit educational entity. There are currently 754 of these stations in operation. Want to operate a low power FM "pirate" station? Create a non-profit entity, and hire a radio engineer to properly build the station and sign off on the FCC license so it doesn't interfere with any existing licensed stations.
But you can't make any money doing this... but your local church could fill up the FM band with "pirate" stations teaching you about Jesus - Be Healed Sinners! Happy now?:)
If the FCC didn't stop him from broadcasting on the frequency when the first complaint was filed or his signal was detected, he would start to claim that he "owned" that frequency.... and when the guy down two blocks sets up his own pirate station on the same frequency, they start slashing each other's car tires or cranking up their power output.
Then when a financially responsible owner comes along and applies for a construction permit and license to use that frequency, the pirate operator would claim that the FCC was stealing "his" frequency..
The earliest radios (like the one on the Titanic) were "spark" radios... they did not use an AM carrier to send the morse code - they merely arced an RF signal over a gap in the transmitter...
The radio service was done by employees of the Marconi Company. In an ironic twist, Marconi was not able to operate his service on land in Europe, as it was fought by government owned postal services which controlled message delivery (not that governments would look inside the envelopes or log who got messages from what sender or anything like that - it is GW Bush who invented spying, you know)...
Having said that, I don't think there is any information to back up the original claim. The Marconi invention had a range of about 250 miles under normal conditions... the sets were operated by Marconi employees, so I think it very unlikely there was "interference" - the problem was more likely that their were not very many receivers capable of picking up the signals and doing anything about it.
Government regulation of radio began in 1904 when President Theodore Roosevelt organized the Interdepartmental Board of Wireless Telegraphy. In 1910 the Wireless Ship Act was passed. That radio was to be a regulated industry was decided in 1912, when Congress passed a Radio Act that required people to obtain a license from the government in order to operate a radio transmitter. In 1924, Herbert Hoover, who was secretary of the Commerce Department, said that the radio industry was probably the only industry in the nation that was unanimously in favor of having itself regulated. Presumably, this was due both to the industry's desire to put a stop to stations interfering with each others' broadcasts and to limit the number of stations to a small enough number to lock in a profit. The Radio Act of 1927 solved the problem of broadcasting stations using the same frequency and the more powerful ones drowning out less powerful ones. This Act also established that radio waves are public property; therefore, radio stations must be licensed by the government. It was decided, however, not to charge stations for the use of this property.
gives you a list of every licensee which you can click on to see which stations they own.
The list requires a little bit of interpretation to understand..... Carl Rove's Evil Right Wing Clear Channel Corporation (the one that is propping up Air America) has licenses under several different names... Capstar, CC licenses, Citicasters, Clear Channel, AM/FM Licenses, CXR Holdings (Cox Radio) are stations owned or managed by Clear Channel... their total is about 1600 stations, or a little over 10% of the licenses. As of about a week ago, Drudge leaked that Clear Channel was looking to unload some of its smaller market stations (the NAB convention was last week, I think)
Cumulus has 301, Citadel 225, Educational Media Foundation (K-Love, Air1) 166, American Family (Religious) 134,...) by the time we run out of "conglomerates", we have accounted for maybe 2,500 out of 13,838 licenses..
What I think you are really saying is "In my urban market, in the genre I like to listen to", most of those stations are owned by conglomerates - but for the country as a whole, that is clearly not accurate. Drive across the US some time with your radio turned to AM and you'll clearly see that isn't the case. On the other hand, when you hear the local preacher on the radio, or the local Swap Shop program, I'm guessing you don't want to count that as local live programming:)
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In 1981, the *Democrats* controlled the US House by a margin of 242 to 192 (1 ind)
n ,_1980.htm
o urlawsaremade.pdf
http://experts.about.com/e/u/u/U.S._House_electio
All appropriations bills originate in the House. Bills in the House get scheduled by the Rules Committee. The majority party in the House controls the operation of all commitees by appointing the chairman of each commitee, and having a majority of members on every committee (except the Ethics committee which must be even).
http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/how
The specific legislation referred to in this thread was called the "Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1981", which was HR 3982 (It was introduced by a Republican)
The Bill passed in the House 232-193 (which means at least 40 Dems voted for it)
The Bill was agreed to by the Senate by voice vote.... when the bill came back from the conference committee, the Senate had a roll call vote, and agreed to the bill 80-14.
In the 1980 election, the Democrats lost a net of 12 Senators and lost control of the Senate. Ronald Reagan had defeated Jimmy Carter by winning 44 states.
Democrats in DC perhaps were stunned by Americans voting "Truth to Power" and were too scared of their own shadows to take on Ronald Reagan's legislative agenda - but they still had control of the House and could have stopped it.
Now who looks stupid?
My web site does a 302 redirect to launch the appropriate media player via the web browser (WMP,
The problem with IE7 is that if the URI is an mms:// type (Micosoft Multimedia Streaming)
Example:
mms://64.92.199.74/KPAM-AM
(KPAM is a news/talk radio station in Portland, Oregon)
If you do a 302 redirect to that location:, you get a DNS "Server not found" error, which is extremely odd, since that URI does not contain a domain name, so no DNS lookup should be necessary.
In more detail, if you have a copy of IE7, click on this link:
http://streamingradioguide.com/listens.php?statio
(Again, this is KPAM)
This is the response you get:
I don't see anything odd that I've done wrong - this works on IE6 and all other browsers. All 230 stations using mms:// URIs fail. Putting the mms:// link directly into the browser, they work.
If this flaw isn't fixed by the time IE7 ships, I'll have to redirect the visitors away from MMS streams to other stream types (mostly m3u/pls mp3 playlists). MMS has definite advantages like adaptive playback speeds, automatic protocol support detection that make it useful when it works. Since MMS is Microsoft's streaming server software, this is a big puzzle to me why they haven't caught this in testing. I could see the anti-phishing filter being the explanation, but stating a workaround doesn't get the bugs fixed.
I am not a nuclear scientist, but...
It seems possible that the reports that the test was much smaller than expected may be an indication that the North Koreans don't quite figure how to make an -effective- nuclear explosion. Anything US Intelligence would say in public about why their test failed and/or how we know if it failed would only serve to provide information to the North Koreans to improve their next test.
Knowing that something is possible is half way to knowing how to do it.
Secrecy isn't always a bad thing.
I have never seen a flower chase after a honey bee.
There have been many recent examples of when a single Federal judge has "decided" that some law passed by the State Legislature or Congress is "Unconstitutional" based on very little more than the judge's desired outcome.
IANAL, but to stop the low level District Court judges from violating the seperation of powers principle and creating legal chaos, something needs to be done to limit the ability of a single unelected judge from overriding the entire legislative branch.... perhaps Congress limiting the jurisidiction (which is has the power to do written in the Constitution) that for a law passed by a legislature (or actions of the executive branch) to be overruled by the courts that the ruling must come from the full Appeals Court, and that there should be a presumption that the other two branches are -not- violating the Constitution until convincingly proven otherwise in either a full District Court or the Supreme Court.
Not Global Warming - Global Climate Change!
1
w -std112904.php
Get with the program...
That way no matter what happpens, the research scientists (and politicians) are going to right, and we know how important that is.
Did I hear that the Ozone Hole got bigger this year even with CFCs being outlawed?
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/700507004
Revised estimates are that ozone levels won't be back to "normal" over Antartica until 2065.
The reason the hole appears to have grown to a record size this season was unusually *cold* tempereratures in the stratosphere this winter (winter in the Southern Hemisphere, that is). Surely a cold stratosphere is proof of the existance of man made global warming!
http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/MSU/msusci.html
Now this information puts forth the idea that cooler strophosphere temperatures are *due* to ozone depletion, not caused by it... and that CO2 levels are also responsible. Ignore the two big red spikes when major volcanic eruptions occurred. Data points like that are not relevant to computing average values or trends - they just tend to make computer models produce strange predictions.
Or try this reasearch:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-11/uo
That the esimates in the models were off by 40 to 70% of what would happen to the temperature of the trophosphere because of "contamination" of the data from the strophosphere data.
Can I go back to eating my transfats now?
if you drop a screaming cell phone into a bucket of water, would it explode?
Take a visit to the closest east/west rail line and note the frequency, speed and priority of the container trains with Asian markings. Those containers are mostly making the transit from West Coast ports to destinations in Europe, not for internal US consumption (something overlooked on the entire Dubai ports controversy). This "Land Bridge" saves enough in transit time to more than offset the additional costs of unloading and reloading the containers from/to container ships.
To transport all of those Asian prduced goods to the EU across 3000 miles (5000 km) of the continental US is adding an insignificant amount to the US GDP. The containers pass through the country are sealed and neither imports nor exports - the only effect on GDP is the shipping charges - while consuming relatively large amounts of petroleum-based energy (and releasing the dreaded poison carbon dioxide in addition!).
I propose in the spirit of equity and fairness and preservation of the global environment that all Asia to EU shipping return to being directed instead through the Panama or Suez canals, or around the Cape of Good Hope in order to harmonize the world's energy consumption. So what if if the next version of the PlayStation doesn't arrive in the EU for an extra 60 days? It's worth the sacrifice to protect the future, wouldn't you agree?
Of course, if we head down the path of "We must inspect 100% of all containers that enter the US", we'll arrive at the same conclusion, just for different reasons.
Do you think availability of huge amounts of electricity to power this thing in the Andes Mountains might be a constraint?
(not to mention the fact that the Andes Mountains are not inside the United States at this time)
This is a really rough idea, but I'll lob it out for some thought (and release all future IP claims)... I might even be similar to IM2000, which I haven't read about
How about evolving email to a P2P application where the email never passes through any ISP's computer... and transfer the email over an encrypted channel. Using a central directory something similar to DNS, if you wanted to send an email to john.doe@isp123.com, you would query to get back the IP address of the computer (or maybe something more clever to hide the recipient from the sender).. that is handling email for him. The sender would have to identify itself for approval to permit the recipient to manage which senders they wish to receive email from and under what conditions... having a simple reliable method to determine how long the sender has been registered would greatly limit hit-and-run spammers.
This is not a server at isp123.com (although it could be a proxy or intermediary for corporate mail or computers not normally online)... an IP address and encryption key is returned.... the sender connects to the IP address, an encryption key exchange takes place - once the mutual key exchange and authentication takes place, the email is sent by the sender. If the recipient's computer is offline or ignores the connection request, the sender adds it to its polling queue and tries later.
The value added by SMTP was back in the old days when bandwidth was expensive, email was often delayed to be sent via UUCP overnight, international circuits were hugely expensive and small, and most client computers (and many email servers) could not be assumed to be online 24/7. Those guiding principles are no longer true.
There is significant evidence that IMs and SMS messaging are largely displacing what people used to use email for - especially in the under 25 group. Email might be a problem that doesn't need a solution.
As a fellow Libertarian, do you see government having any role is making sure that the operators of gambling establishments are running an honest game? Or that they disclose the house's "take" on things like slot machines? Should the revenue from casinos be taxed?
9 -4411
Especially on the Internet, where there is no physical place of business, and all of the win/lose decisions are being made by computer code, the potential for fraud is enormous. (where is the cry for a paper audit trail because we can't trust the software?)
When someone claims a casino stole their money, is their any role for the government to get involved in the dispute? If the government had no jursidiction over the casino, it lacks the information to know what happened and why. Even if there are laws, a government has no jurisdiction outside of its borders.
If the government doesn't regulate an activity up front, yet people demand that it solve the problems the lack of regulation has created - then we wind up where we are now... Most people do seem to want government to "protect" them, even at the cost of giving up their personal freedoms. This is what governments do (see: State of Fear, Michael Chricton 2004)
In summary, it looks like the money funnelled through Jack Abramoff and other lobbyists paid off.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h10
Note that this Bill passed the House by 317-93 (R 200-17, D 115-76, I 1-0)
All 5 representatives from Connecticut (home of Foxwood Casino) voted Yes.
Do the mechanical lever voting machines in use for about a hundred years produce a paper audit trail of each vote? (the requirement that suddenly seems to be the de facto standard of an accurate vote counting process)
u bid=475
w =1015
Wasn't the push for "We need to have electronic voting machines so this never happens again" pushed by the Democrats and Civil Rights groups following the 2000 election because their voters were "confused" by the butterly "paper" punch card ballots (that happened to be designed by the Democrats in those counties in Florida with the alleged irregularities)...
http://www.demos.org/page14.cfm
http://www.reformelections.org/publications.asp?p
I'll start to listen to Robert (puff puff) Kennedy about honest elections when he acknowledges what happened in the 1960 presidential election in Cook County, Illinois... (he has a show on Air America called Ring of Fire on the weekends if you want to hear his voice directly)
http://streamingradioguide.com/radio-show.php?sho
Personally, I have no problem with paper ballots - technology is not the solution to every problem. The opposing argument (and the one enforced by the new HAVA law) is that the voting system must catch and correct voting mistakes - like voting for 2 people for president by mistake... with mechanical voting machines, that is a non-issue as the machine has a mechanical block that prevents over-voting.... only punch card or paper ballots have that issue... hence the claim by the electronic machine makers that there are very few votes with errors... Some people tend to assume that if a voter didn't vote for anyone on the ballot for an office that this was a "mistake" or that the person must have "meant" to vote for their candidate, but was "confused". Perhaps not.
Back during the 2004 debates, President Bush was hit with the question to name 3 mistakes he had made. He offered up only a vague answer that he might have picked different people for some of his appointments.
More than anything, this Washington Post rambling chronology (story?) screams very loudly at one of George Bushs's largest mistakes - letting George Tenet (and Richard Clarke) stay on from the Clinton administration. At least in part, I believe the reason Condoleeza and Rumsfeld did not do what they wanted was because she didn't trust their judgement. Colin Powell and his buddy Richard Armitage are surely on that list now, too.
For those who skipped reading the article, here are some of the "on one hand, and then on the other hand" qualifiers to the central assertion:
"Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser"
Note that in July, 2001, Condoleeza Rice was the "Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs" - which while it is an important position, did not make her part of the Cabinet. The National Security advisor is just that - a staff advisor to the President heading the national security council. The Director of the CIA and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are "statutory advisors", but -not- members of that council . Just to remind you that now she is the Secretary of State - and not to confuse those two roles.
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-1.htm
(that is the order where Ms Rice reforms the NSC under her management)
"For months, Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy, including specific presidential orders called "findings" that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden."
Unless I wasn't listening clearly, former President Clinton has stated that he did *sign* a finding specifically authorizing the CIA to kill (not just capture) Bin Laden. When? Is there any proof of that? Why wasn't it carried out? Is Bob Woodward fact checking this for his next book deal?
Well, ask Richard Clarke, the now authority on all such matters:
From that right-wing propoganda machine, the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/030 804fa_fact
"Clarke told me that in the mid-nineties "the C.I.A. was authorized to mount operations to go into Afghanistan and apprehend bin Laden." President Clinton, Clarke said, "was really gung-ho" about the scenario. "He had no hesitations," he said. "But the C.I.A. had hesitations. They didn't want their own people killed. And they didn't want their shortcomings exposed. They really didn't have the paramilitary capability to do it; they could not stage a snatch operation." Instead of trying to mount the operation themselves, Clarke said, "the C.I.A. basically paid a bunch of local Afghans, who went in and did nothing."
Continuing with the Post story...
"Two weeks earlier, he [George Tenet] had told Richard A. Clarke, the National Security Council's counterterrorism director: "It's my sixth sense, but I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one."
In writing? Any recording? Any proof? What did he mean by "it"?
"On June 30, a top-secret senior executive intelligence brief contained an article headlined "Bin Laden Threats Are Real.""
Hmmm... "top secret"? That has a specific meaning in government circles - beyond comic book characters. Should we look for the NY Times to be leaking this document before the upcoming election?
"Tenet [...] had two main points when they met with her [Rice]. First, al-Qaeda was going to attack American interests, possibly in the United States itself."
-possibly-
This is not news. Everyone agreed that he probably was going to do something somewhere at some time.
"Black emphasized that this amounted to a strategic warning, meaning the prob
I notice that Germany (circa 1945) is missing from that list. Curious, isn't it?
And a tip to the Microsoft Internet Explorer team - adding the current site to the Trusted Zone whitelist should be a matter of one click or possibly one HotKey.... not opening up multiple levels of windows and having to type the URL in by hand... and done in such a way that it is impossible for some flaw in the browser or future expoit to do via scripting...
How is this handled in MSIE 7.0? Anyone know?
(I had MSIE 7.0 beta, but uninstalled it after a couple days because it broke 302 redirects of mms:// URIs, and the buggy or non-intuitive way it selects items in a drop-down list - my report in the support group generated the typical "I didn't actually read what you said, but I'm sure this isn't a problem" response)
So they'll get to have a flurry of hotfixes and service packs to fix the 7.0 version when it winds up on people's desktop one morning and breaks all kinds of stuff in important places....
What is the purpose of a beta test with users, anyhow?
And if you look just to the west of the Alien Bug, you'll see the town named Aalen.
A coincidence? I think not.
One of the points mentioned in the article is the current version of satellites are potentially vulnerable to blinding because they are in predictable orbits.
A spy telescope on the Moon would be fairly useless, as half of the world would always be outside of its view (on a pretty predictable pattern), and the telescope would have serious problems any time it was looking towards the earth and the sun is behind the earth (at the point of the full moon and probably for several days on either side).
One on Mars would be even more impractical. Mars would often be in its orbit behind the sun (as viewed from the Earth or vice versa)... At minimum distance with no solar issues, pictures would probably be at the resolution to be able to pick out Lake Michigan, not see what the license place number is on the embassy car parked outside of the building at the uranium mine in Niger.
Or the even more obvious - "I didn't know I couldn't install my copy of Office on every computer I own. I thought it was a license for me, not that I have to buy one for each computer."
My copy of Office XP purchased at the same time as my computer (2002) suddenly came to life and demanded to be authenticated. I still have the original CD (which I don't remember it even asking for)... but you can bet if I tried now to install it on a second computer, it has every right to complain profusely.
Is it normal for a gas station / food mart surveillance camera to pan by itself following one individual as he walks across the parking lot and wanders around the store? or did CNN digitally enhance the video?
Since the "news" story mentions that this ATM was in this condition for days (dispensing 20s for 5s to everyone) until an "honest" person told the store, how do they know this was the person who actually did something to the machine? Or that it wasn't a setup mistake made by the store operator? or a malicioous act by a former employee? or an insurance scam by the store owner?
And people in the news business wonder why people don't trust them any more.
Do you think if we rapidly built 1,360 (or 650 or 390) new nuclear reactors and bring them online in 10 years - that this would have an effect on the price of uranium ore (and the related assumptions about how much electricity $9 would buy)? Would China also do the same?
m ation_papers/inf75print.htm
Who would be the OPEC of uranium? Where are the easiest to mine and process proven reserves? Are those countries politically stable?
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/printable_infor
Welcome to your new Australian overlords
Should we look again at breeder reactors?
Will environmentalists get on board to permit nuclear power plant construction to resume?
Not really making a point here with the questions - just encouraging rational discussion before we commit to a government mandated "5 year" program.
Anyone else been getting "unfair moderation" notification messages for moderations they didn't do?
At the risk of introducing facts into a Slashdot thread...
D
:)
http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/lowpwr.html#UNLICENSE
Unlicensed operation on the AM and FM radio broadcast bands is permitted for some extremely low powered devices covered under Part 15 of the FCC's rules. On FM frequencies, these devices are limited to an effective service range of approximately 200 feet (61 meters). See 47 CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) Section 15.239, and the July 24, 1991 Public Notice. On the AM broadcast band, these devices are limited to an effective service range of approximately 200 feet (61 meters). See 47 CFR Sections 15.207, 15.209, 15.219, and 15.221. These devices must accept any interference caused by any other operation, which may further limit the effective service range. For more information on Part 15 devices, please see OET Bulletin No. 63 ("Understanding the FCC Regulations for Low-Power, Non-Licensed Transmitters"). Questions not answered by this Bulletin can be directed to the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology, Customer Service Branch, at the Columbia, Maryland office, phone (301) - 362 - 3000, e-mail LabHelp@fcc.gov.
Also, in 2000 the FCC created a new class of FM licenses that operate at low power (up to 100 watts with a 3.5 mile range):
http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/lpfm/index.html
To obtain a low power FM License, it must be owned by a non-profit educational entity. There are currently 754 of these stations in operation. Want to operate a low power FM "pirate" station? Create a non-profit entity, and hire a radio engineer to properly build the station and sign off on the FCC license so it doesn't interfere with any existing licensed stations.
But you can't make any money doing this... but your local church could fill up the FM band with "pirate" stations teaching you about Jesus - Be Healed Sinners! Happy now?
If the FCC didn't stop him from broadcasting on the frequency when the first complaint was filed or his signal was detected, he would start to claim that he "owned" that frequency.... and when the guy down two blocks sets up his own pirate station on the same frequency, they start slashing each other's car tires or cranking up their power output.
Then when a financially responsible owner comes along and applies for a construction permit and license to use that frequency, the pirate operator would claim that the FCC was stealing "his" frequency..
Actually, it was even worse than that....
d ustry.history
The earliest radios (like the one on the Titanic) were "spark" radios... they did not use an AM carrier to send the morse code - they merely arced an RF signal over a gap in the transmitter...
http://titanic.marconigraph.com/mgy_wireless.html
The radio service was done by employees of the Marconi Company. In an ironic twist, Marconi was not able to operate his service on land in Europe, as it was fought by government owned postal services which controlled message delivery (not that governments would look inside the envelopes or log who got messages from what sender or anything like that - it is GW Bush who invented spying, you know)...
Having said that, I don't think there is any information to back up the original claim. The Marconi invention had a range of about 250 miles under normal conditions... the sets were operated by Marconi employees, so I think it very unlikely there was "interference" - the problem was more likely that their were not very many receivers capable of picking up the signals and doing anything about it.
Here is one interpretation of how the laws came into effect:
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/scott.radio.in
Government regulation of radio began in 1904 when President Theodore Roosevelt organized the Interdepartmental Board of Wireless Telegraphy. In 1910 the Wireless Ship Act was passed. That radio was to be a regulated industry was decided in 1912, when Congress passed a Radio Act that required people to obtain a license from the government in order to operate a radio transmitter. In 1924, Herbert Hoover, who was secretary of the Commerce Department, said that the radio industry was probably the only industry in the nation that was unanimously in favor of having itself regulated. Presumably, this was due both to the industry's desire to put a stop to stations interfering with each others' broadcasts and to limit the number of stations to a small enough number to lock in a profit. The Radio Act of 1927 solved the problem of broadcasting stations using the same frequency and the more powerful ones drowning out less powerful ones. This Act also established that radio waves are public property; therefore, radio stations must be licensed by the government. It was decided, however, not to charge stations for the use of this property.
>>Well, considering that most all of the radio stations in the US are owned by 2 or 3 conglomerates
:)
Take off the tinfoil hat for a moment
As of the first week of September, there were 13,838 licensed AM and FM stations in the United States (not counting low power FM stations)..
http://streamingradioguide.com/licensee.php
gives you a list of every licensee which you can click on to see which stations they own.
The list requires a little bit of interpretation to understand..... Carl Rove's Evil Right Wing Clear Channel Corporation (the one that is propping up Air America) has licenses under several different names... Capstar, CC licenses, Citicasters, Clear Channel, AM/FM Licenses, CXR Holdings (Cox Radio) are stations owned or managed by Clear Channel... their total is about 1600 stations, or a little over 10% of the licenses. As of about a week ago, Drudge leaked that Clear Channel was looking to unload some of its smaller market stations (the NAB convention was last week, I think)
Cumulus has 301, Citadel 225, Educational Media Foundation (K-Love, Air1) 166, American Family (Religious) 134,...) by the time we run out of "conglomerates", we have accounted for maybe 2,500 out of 13,838 licenses..
What I think you are really saying is "In my urban market, in the genre I like to listen to", most of those stations are owned by conglomerates - but for the country as a whole, that is clearly not accurate. Drive across the US some time with your radio turned to AM and you'll clearly see that isn't the case. On the other hand, when you hear the local preacher on the radio, or the local Swap Shop program, I'm guessing you don't want to count that as local live programming