Abstract: A method of swing on a swing is disclosed, in which a user positioned on a standard swing suspended by two chains from a substantially horizontal tree branch induces side to side motion by pulling alternately on one chain and then the other.
The application concludes with:
Lastly, it should be noted that because pulling alternately on one chain and then the other resembles in some measure the movements one would use to swing from vines in a dense jungle forest, the swinging method of the present invention may be referred to by the present inventor and his sister as "Tarzan" swinging. The user may even choose to produce a Tarzan-type yell while swinging in the manner described, which more accurately replicates swinging on vines in a dense jungle forest. Actual jungle forestry is not required.
Licenses are available from the inventor upon request.
However, when the user see "This application requires administrator rights", will he/she still just blindly fill in the requested info, click "yes", and get the spyware?
No. The average user will install software only if it involves clicking "Next" "Ok" or "Finish". Any weird questions about administrator rights will spark a call to son/brother/cousin/friend/12 year old who will know the right answers.
On Knight Rider the bad guy escaped from Michael and KITT because he had painted his car using water-based paint and simply drove through a car wash - he then drove right by KITT's rear view mirror but since the sensors only detect color (on cars that are out of visual range????) he got away. I also recall a similar gag used in Canonball Run (one of them), and CHiPS.
Maybe they'll try to frame O.J. again and we can be treated to yet another thrilling adventure where ninety thousand cops idle down the freeway after a white ford bronco?
And it is acceptable to prohibit minors from entering a movie theater to see an R rated movie without and adult, right?
Oh... wait... it isn't. Why haven't the judges declared that age restrictions on R movies (or even NC-17 movies) are unconstitutional? Why can't any 10 year old go off and buy a copy of cream 'n juggz off the magazine rack? A 21 year old is allowed to visit hustler.com at a library, but a 12 year old isn't. Why are all of these age restrictions acceptable but the one involving video games is not?
Why is it legal to sell some slasher video game to kids where they get to control the action, but not legal to sell the slasher DVD to those same kids? Why can you sell some Playboy game, or some hardcore sex game to kids, but they can't buy the magazine?
Pick a standard and stick with it - kids should either be allowed to purchase sexual images or they shouldn't. Just because one particular format sells more than others isn't a valid reason to allow it but exclude everything else.
His constituents sent this sleazeball to DC eight freaking times. How could any congressional district be that incredibly stupid?
Meanwhile, George II seeks to essentially eliminate the privacy act. How many senators and reps will lose their jobs for refusing to put a stop to this? How many judges will be thrown off the bench for refusing to declare it unconstitutional?
I've said it before... people deserve what they elect.
Ulterior motive - somewhere in the back of my cynical and jaded mind is a sliver of hope that somebody will be inspired to prove me wrong and actually vote somebody into office who gives a rat's uvula about honesty, integrity and something other than personal gain. But I honestly think that the nation is beyond hope and will simply implode - sooner, rather than later. Case in point: the rapidly aging boomers who are reasonably expected to do nothing to stuff congress with entitlement wonks who bestow perk after benefit after safety net after plan after program onto the ilk of the AARP without consideration of cost or economic damage. This is inevitable.
McCain's anti torture laws are cute and fluffy and make the news and get a few people to gasp in amazement and thank him for taking such a no-brainer stance - but the law is worthless. The federal government is above the laws and will simply classify anything illegal they do and make sure it never sees the light of day. They've been doing it since before any/. user was born and will continue to do so without concern for who is hurt. Medical experiments without knowledge - let alone consent? Let's classify it. While their hurricane modification experiments were certainly not responsible for a hurricane that made an unexpected swerve and racked up a body count on the mainland, their kneejerk reaction was "classify it". Dumping toxic waste in violation of federal laws? Classify it. The actions of King George I say it all - within hours of signing a law prohibiting the president from authorizing certainly covert activity without notifying the appropriate members of congress he engaged in the very same activity he himself had just prohibited.
The only glimmer of hope in the darkness of US sanctioned torture is the EU's recent announcement that any EU state found to harbor a secret CIA prison would lose their EU voting rights. Here's hoping they follow through.
I've been involved. Years ago I lobbied my state's attorney general to do something about spam - he said spam was protected by the first amendment (my specific complaint was about companies that blindly send chr$(88)+chr$(88)+chr$(88) prawn to 8 year olds). And that's one of the more positive responses I've encountered.
I really don't care anymore. The system is broken, corrupt and beyond salvage. It simply costs too much money and the collective citizenry doesn't want a better elected body. Who am I to argue that they shouldn't get what they vote for?
The real problem is that everybody says that their senator/representative/president/mayor/governor is the single breath of fresh air in an otherwise stagnant cesspool of politics. Their elected is truly a member of the elect and if only he could call the shots then everything would be straightened out. This is why - despite an overwhelming disapproval of the electees by the electors - the same people get voted back in time and time again.
In another thread somebody was waxing long about how his electee was great and did this good and that good - in the form of sponsoring bills - without acknowledging all of the bad bills this guy had voted for. His initial support of the PATRIOT act (something that only the evil or the stupid would have voted for) was dismissed with "the guy made a mistake and shouldn't lose his job over it". THERE is the problem.
We need more elected like Cincinnatus - and fewer with the raw, naked ambition, powerlust and sense of entitlement as present in the families of Bush and Kennedy and, most recently, Hillary - aspiring to be the first woman to sleep her way into the oval office. (Let's face it... if she didn't put out for Billy all those years she wouldn't be a senator today - everything she is stems from her willingness to share the task of polishing Slick's Willie.)
Democrats seeks to appease the dead weight of the nation - and as such have direct financial and political incentive to make people as dependent on the government as possible. Let's face it: Dems directly and unashamedly benefit from having welfare rolls as large as possible and have zero incentive to shrink their guaranteed constituent base and every reason to make those numbers increase.
Republicans seek to appease those who actually make the economy work - at the expense of everybody else - and are, unfortunately, less interested in allowing everybody a fair chance to reach the top than maintaining the status quo.
As has been said, if you aren't a democrat at 20 you don't have a heart. If you aren't republican at 50 you don't have a brain.
Bottom line: I don't want to become a politician because I don't want to play in the mud with the swine. I don't think anybody can be a successful politician unless they are lying sell-outs willing to conduct interior visual inspections of their own colons on demand by a lobby rat for a special interest group. And I don't think the citizens want it any other way. Our last presidential election was, for all intents and purposes, split 50/50 between a liar and a... well, between two liars. The only difference is that Kerry wanted to advance himself and King George II wanted to advance his friends. The citizenry bickered (and continues to whine) about how unfair the election was, how poor of a selection there was... but never called for the ouster of the chairs of the GOP/Dems who are responsible for putting these two twits on the ballot.
The nation sucks. The people don't want to do anything but whine about it. This is what they want. This is what they demand. This is what they deserve.
Several efficiency/organization experts have pointed out that email and IMs tend to be overused and abused: they tend to take the highest human IRQ and are constantly interrupting whatever else it is that you are doing. This little device can only further the problem.
At the office it took some convincing but I finally managed to talk some people into setting their email poll to once every 30-60 minutes to give them time to finish one task before another task started up. They all report being much happier.
until he marked his calendar to remind him to water the heater's own outside ground stake every couple of weeks
He'd have better luck if he dumped a solution of copper sulfate on the stake.
The only shocks I ever got were from brushing up against the showerhead itself. Inevitable since when standing upright the ducha was smack dab in the middle of my forehead.
You say this after mentioning that all Costa-Rican showers have EXPOSED ELECTRICAL SWITCHES IN THE SHOWER!
If only that had been the only electric oddity I encountered.
I believe I saw circuit breakers a total of three times. I never saw a single glass fuse. What does this leave? Little pieces of aluminum that look like little wrenches. When the current gets too high they melt/vaporize. At one apartment the landlord never had spares, but would cross the two terminals in the fusebox with several turns of his solder. Who knows just how much current it would take to melt it.
Arc welding is very common - on/off switches or plugs for the welders are not. They would usually scrape off some insulation on the power line, cut off the plug on the end of the electric cord, bend the wires into a hook and set into place. To turn the machine off one swats in the general direction of the wires until they disconnect.
The electric showerheads never gave me any major problems - except for the time the americans spliced the wires with masking tape. Everybody said that they were perfectly safe (to reassume me, I suppose) but I never heard of anybody who had been electrocuted, nor did I ever meet anybody who had even heard of somebody getting zapped. Again, maybe they were just trying to reassume me.
By the way, I found a picture of the showerhead... something that most people in this country (or many other countries) have ever seen. (I didn't read the article there, just found the picture.)
In a former life I lived in Costa Rica for a couple of years. In all that time I saw exactly -two- hot water heaters. (Out near Puntarenas and down in San Isidro the water simply comes out out of the plumbing warm 24/7 without any human intervention.) To get a hot water one had an electric gizmo that threaded onto the end of the horizontal pipe sticking out of the wall in the shower (unless one had this electric ducha one never had a showerhead ofcaug any kind). All showers that I ever saw were constructed to include a large frankenstein-style knife switch in the shower stall with you mounted up in the corner, hopefully away from the expected stream of water. Wiring was one hot, one neutral.
As the water flows the pressure would close a switch inside the showerhead and heat the water electrically as it sprayed out. Costa Ricas tend to be shorter than Americans so these pipes are invariably mounted about 5'10" off the ground, forcing many to squat down a little bit to get under the head. An accidental brush up against the showerhead with give you a quick reminder to squat back down again. The unfortunately arrival of a moderate earthquake (fairly common) could also bring about a zap.
In one apartment the occupants (Americans, actually - Costa Ricans aren't this stupid) had spliced the wiring (120V @ 50Hz IIRC +/- 10% to allow for the ever-changing conditions on the line) with masking tape. I happened to be in there at the moment the tape burst into flames making me one of the only people in the history of the world to have been using a shower that caught fire.
No, the day that congress is inspired with the idea that we'll all be wallowing in misery unless they pass laws regarding the security of operating systems... then we'll all be up defecation tributary in an unpowered watercraft without means of propulsion.
No matter how bad things are, congress can always make them worse.
I never would have fallen for the original PATRIOT act - besides, most legislators probably never even bothered to read the text of the legislation (most legislators don't bother to read the majority of the legislation for which they vote).
I am deeply bothered by the excessive compensation that these people have granted to themselves. $170,000/year is far and away too much money to pay these people, especially considering all of the additional perks (they have given themselves, without oversight). Remember, immediately after accepting this COLA these people slashed $700,000,000 from food stamp programs. People in Congress should not get COLAs: it would be perfectly reasonable to require them to introduce legislation every time they want more money, do a roll call vote on it, then wait until after the next election to see if their constituents agree that they deserve making more than 3x the annual salary of most normal people.
And no, I don't particularly care about reforming government - most people are perfectly happy with the way things are now. Along the lines of what the Sony chief said, most people don't understand (PATRIOT, RIAA/MPAA abuses, stupidity in the patent office, the flagrant Constitutional abuses of the Mickey Mouse Preservaton Act(s), budget defecits and the like) so why should anybody expect that they will care? And if they don't care, I won't care.
Your Rep - and all of the others - are pushing the nation closer to bankruptcy. They are recklessly spending money hand over fist today fully aware that the next generation is going to have to clean up the mess. The economics of the system is simply and undeniably unsustainable. Your rep has consistently refused to introduce legislation to keep terrorists from walking across the US/MX border. Your rep has consistently refused to introduce legislation to prevent the US Government from attempting to hide large sections of its activities by classifying everything. Your rep has repeatedly refused to openly call for the arrest of those federal employees who are still drawing pensions for conducting secret medical tests on US prisoners. Your rep has repeatedly refused to introduce legislation to hold government employees accountable for their abuses and mistakes.
But your rep came out and said that torture is bad - that makes it all worth it, right?
Collectively, the US Congress as a body is corrupt, inefficient, generally stupid, lazy, cowardly and overall a bad thing. But each and every member there has constituents - such as yourself - who swear that "the problem lies with all of the other electees - my rep is the greatest thing since sliced bread", so nothing will ever change. A handful of good votes does not counter all of the collective flawed mandates - your rep is unquestionably part of the problem. They all need to be replaced, we all know they won't be. Incumbents are virtually impossible to force out of office so they will continue to make bad decision after bad decision and lead this country down the wrong path.
But, as you pointed out, most of the constituents in this country don't care - their rep (or senator... can't leave them out) is perfect, so you need to keep sending the one vote of fresh air back to the hill.
Please keep in mind that this guy voted the original PATRIOT act into being - refer to http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll398.xml - voting for the original PATRIOT act negates at least four or five dozen good deeds.
Rep Markey has also worked to circumvent the 27th Amendment of the United States and has happily accepted pay raise after pay rai... oops... excuse me... his most recent salary adjustment wasn't a raise, it was a cost of living adjustment. Varying the starting representative's salary upwards by an extra $3,100/year to almost $170,000/year isn't covered by the text "No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened." because COLAs aren't salary variations, say the judges with retirement benefits directly keyed to congressional salaries.
I am also strongly opposed to the concept that "a Federal workforce of passenger and baggage screeners is more responsive to the public than the private sector" (he sponsored HR2649) and the thought of unionized airport screeners is nauseating ("all employees of the Transportation Security Administration, including Federal airport screeners, should be permitted to engage in collective bargaining and be represented in collective bargaining by a representative or organization of their choosing"). If you think screeners are tough to fire now when they are caught stealing things from your bags, just wait until they are fully unionized.
Some would that that HR3710 is a good thought - royalty relief for gas and oil companies - except this is nothing more than an additional tax that will be passed on to consumers.
I called up the company that is acting as managers for the group Van Zant to express my displeasure. The receptionist said that they have been getting "a lot" of calls over the issue and she had several "I have been instructed to say" comments. "We regret this, we regret that, we have complained, this isn't our fault" type of comments. And no, this isn't the fault of Van Zant (though they could have demanded that no such copy protection be included on any of their CDs during contract negotiations, but to my knowledge nobody has ever done that, nor would they ever do something like that).
However, when I asked if Van Zant would even consider moving to somebody other than Sony when the current contract ended, there was no comment. Meaning no, they won't. And here, people, is the proof. And the pudding. In a nice silver serving dish. Van Zant is making lots and lots of money from Sony - this is a good thing. I believe people should be allowed to try and make as much money as they can or want. But Van Zant is making money at the expense of their fans. If they respected their fans, they would make it clear and public that as soon as they can they would leave Sony. But they are being paid too much to do so. I would hope that the people who comprise the free market would vote with their feet, but we all know that isn't going to happen. Sony is going to continue to make billions of dollars selling CDs to people. Van Zant is going to continue to receive their millions from Sony. The world continues spinning.
Even a blind pig finds an acorn every now and then.
For every act of good that your incumbent US rep engaged in I'll bet he has hundreds of acts of bad. Chances are he voted for the bridges to nowhere, the patriot act, DMCA and is openly refusing to even pretend that he believes in fiscal responsibility. Odds are exceptionally high that your congresscritter doesn't have any significant problem with the intrusive and ineffective state of airport security, has no issue with Haliburton billing the federal government $85/hour to hire illegal immigrants at $5/hour to rebuild New Orleans and doesn't particularly care that the US Military routinely hides blatant environmental destruction (such as open dumping of toxic waste at groom lake) and personal embarassment by classifying the whole thing.
Your US rep gladly accepts pay hike after pay hike in clear and direct violation of the spirit and intent of amendment XXVII.
There are lots of people out there who would be more than happy to champion the cause of ending extraordinary rendition and wouldn't be rushing to kiss the posterior of the RIAA/MPAA, the FBI, the NSA, the CIA.
The odds are that your congressman voted for CAN SPAM, the Mickey Mouse preservation act, approved $100,000 for the Tiger Woods Foundation, 5.5 million dollars for HAARP (suspected in an article of Scientific American to have caused an outbreak of deadly tornados in Florida), $36 million for the C130-J (a craft the defense department deemed unsatisfactory, and $3 million dollars a year for the Department of Energy to run a golf course in the Southwestern United States.
Politicians suck. They lie. They cheat. They steal.
And worst of all, they are returned to power time and time again by people like you who focus on a single, obvious, anybody with a shread of decency would do the same, no-brainer act of good and declare this to outweigh all of the bad.
The harm your congressman has brought to the nation greatly outweighs any positive action. While your rep is opposing sending people to foreign countries so they can be tortured but still passes the *&@#^$! appropriations bills that gives the CIA money to carry this out it isn't enough. Enron's chief (probably) opposes kicking puppies - so let's keep him in power forever?
First4internet is fully responsible for the the security holes in the code, and - as I understand - the copyright violation (unless the stolen algorhythm was something that Sony put on top of f4i's code).
From TFA this gizmo detects those with something to hide.
What about the poor schmuck just excited about going off to visit his mistress? Or his girlfriend, knowing he's about to get his first action in 9 months? Or any member of Congress?
I am pretty sick and tired of these jerkwads coming out with all of this technology that is supposed to protect us from somebody who has nothing better to do all day long than figure out ways to hurt us. And stick me with billions of dollars in expenses for a technology that may or may not catch somebody other than the occasional innocent git or two-bit martyr wanna be. Does it work? "Sorry, for national security reasons we can't tell you how many bad guys we caught or how many innocent guys to whom we gave a cavity probe".
Money isn't the root of all evil anybody who votes for any incumbent is.
Didn't change my mind... just pointed out that "We are interested in Sony's DRM because Zombies might bring down the internet" is inconsistent with "we don't care how easy it is to turn windows boxes into zombies" and "we don't care how many zombies are hosted by AOL (11.71%), comcast.net (10.66%), bellsouth.net (7.46%), or verizon.net (7.40%).
If DHS wants to grab more power and start pretending to be concerned with zombies then sure.. fine.. whatever. (I've abandoned any hope that anything will ever stop the relentless power grab of the federales) BUT Sony's DRM is so far below Microsoft (without whom most botnets would be impossible) on the zombie risk scale that... well, let's just say that the people making these threat assessments wouldn't quality for mensa. Or densa.
The dept of Homeland Security has been worried for some time about the possibility of foreign nationals creating botnets which might allow them to ddos critical online national assets.
Fair enough, but the millions of zombies hosted by comcast, bellsouth.net, or SBC doesn't interest them, the massive security flaws that allow any Microsoft machine to become a zombie just by connecting it to the internet and going for a pizza don't interest them, but a Van Zant (and other) CDs elicit a response from the tier 1 level?
Pardon my cynicism but I suspect that -this- received the attention because no matter what people will always buy broadband internet and people will always buy Microsoft but the paranoid with the amplifying tinfoil hats just might start to demand oversight of DRM technologies to the point where the major congressional donors of the RIAA/MPAA might suffer an induced case of the fidgets.
(Not that there's much danger of that... at this moment the #1 selling album on amazon is 12 Songs [Content/Copy-Protected CD] by Neil Diamond).
Slashdot Mirror
Abstract: A method of swing on a swing is disclosed, in which a user positioned on a standard swing suspended by two chains from a substantially horizontal tree branch induces side to side motion by pulling alternately on one chain and then the other.
The application concludes with:
Lastly, it should be noted that because pulling alternately on one chain and then the other resembles in some measure the movements one would use to swing from vines in a dense jungle forest, the swinging method of the present invention may be referred to by the present inventor and his sister as "Tarzan" swinging. The user may even choose to produce a Tarzan-type yell while swinging in the manner described, which more accurately replicates swinging on vines in a dense jungle forest. Actual jungle forestry is not required.
Licenses are available from the inventor upon request.
No. The average user will install software only if it involves clicking "Next" "Ok" or "Finish". Any weird questions about administrator rights will spark a call to son/brother/cousin/friend/12 year old who will know the right answers.
On Knight Rider the bad guy escaped from Michael and KITT because he had painted his car using water-based paint and simply drove through a car wash - he then drove right by KITT's rear view mirror but since the sensors only detect color (on cars that are out of visual range????) he got away. I also recall a similar gag used in Canonball Run (one of them), and CHiPS.
Maybe they'll try to frame O.J. again and we can be treated to yet another thrilling adventure where ninety thousand cops idle down the freeway after a white ford bronco?
Pick a standard and stick with it - kids should either be allowed to purchase sexual images or they shouldn't. Just because one particular format sells more than others isn't a valid reason to allow it but exclude everything else.
Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy and tax charges and tearfully resigned from office, admitting he took $2.4 million in bribes to steer defense contracts to conspirators.
His constituents sent this sleazeball to DC eight freaking times. How could any congressional district be that incredibly stupid?
Meanwhile, George II seeks to essentially eliminate the privacy act. How many senators and reps will lose their jobs for refusing to put a stop to this? How many judges will be thrown off the bench for refusing to declare it unconstitutional?
I've said it before... people deserve what they elect.
McCain's anti torture laws are cute and fluffy and make the news and get a few people to gasp in amazement and thank him for taking such a no-brainer stance - but the law is worthless. The federal government is above the laws and will simply classify anything illegal they do and make sure it never sees the light of day. They've been doing it since before any /. user was born and will continue to do so without concern for who is hurt. Medical experiments without knowledge - let alone consent? Let's classify it. While their hurricane modification experiments were certainly not responsible for a hurricane that made an unexpected swerve and racked up a body count on the mainland, their kneejerk reaction was "classify it". Dumping toxic waste in violation of federal laws? Classify it. The actions of King George I say it all - within hours of signing a law prohibiting the president from authorizing certainly covert activity without notifying the appropriate members of congress he engaged in the very same activity he himself had just prohibited.
The only glimmer of hope in the darkness of US sanctioned torture is the EU's recent announcement that any EU state found to harbor a secret CIA prison would lose their EU voting rights. Here's hoping they follow through.
I've been involved. Years ago I lobbied my state's attorney general to do something about spam - he said spam was protected by the first amendment (my specific complaint was about companies that blindly send chr$(88)+chr$(88)+chr$(88) prawn to 8 year olds). And that's one of the more positive responses I've encountered.
I really don't care anymore. The system is broken, corrupt and beyond salvage. It simply costs too much money and the collective citizenry doesn't want a better elected body. Who am I to argue that they shouldn't get what they vote for?
In another thread somebody was waxing long about how his electee was great and did this good and that good - in the form of sponsoring bills - without acknowledging all of the bad bills this guy had voted for. His initial support of the PATRIOT act (something that only the evil or the stupid would have voted for) was dismissed with "the guy made a mistake and shouldn't lose his job over it". THERE is the problem.
We need more elected like Cincinnatus - and fewer with the raw, naked ambition, powerlust and sense of entitlement as present in the families of Bush and Kennedy and, most recently, Hillary - aspiring to be the first woman to sleep her way into the oval office. (Let's face it... if she didn't put out for Billy all those years she wouldn't be a senator today - everything she is stems from her willingness to share the task of polishing Slick's Willie.)
Democrats seeks to appease the dead weight of the nation - and as such have direct financial and political incentive to make people as dependent on the government as possible. Let's face it: Dems directly and unashamedly benefit from having welfare rolls as large as possible and have zero incentive to shrink their guaranteed constituent base and every reason to make those numbers increase.
Republicans seek to appease those who actually make the economy work - at the expense of everybody else - and are, unfortunately, less interested in allowing everybody a fair chance to reach the top than maintaining the status quo.
As has been said, if you aren't a democrat at 20 you don't have a heart. If you aren't republican at 50 you don't have a brain.
Bottom line: I don't want to become a politician because I don't want to play in the mud with the swine. I don't think anybody can be a successful politician unless they are lying sell-outs willing to conduct interior visual inspections of their own colons on demand by a lobby rat for a special interest group. And I don't think the citizens want it any other way. Our last presidential election was, for all intents and purposes, split 50/50 between a liar and a ... well, between two liars. The only difference is that Kerry wanted to advance himself and King George II wanted to advance his friends. The citizenry bickered (and continues to whine) about how unfair the election was, how poor of a selection there was... but never called for the ouster of the chairs of the GOP/Dems who are responsible for putting these two twits on the ballot.
The nation sucks. The people don't want to do anything but whine about it. This is what they want. This is what they demand. This is what they deserve.
At the office it took some convincing but I finally managed to talk some people into setting their email poll to once every 30-60 minutes to give them time to finish one task before another task started up. They all report being much happier.
He'd have better luck if he dumped a solution of copper sulfate on the stake.
The only shocks I ever got were from brushing up against the showerhead itself. Inevitable since when standing upright the ducha was smack dab in the middle of my forehead.
If only that had been the only electric oddity I encountered.
I believe I saw circuit breakers a total of three times. I never saw a single glass fuse. What does this leave? Little pieces of aluminum that look like little wrenches. When the current gets too high they melt/vaporize. At one apartment the landlord never had spares, but would cross the two terminals in the fusebox with several turns of his solder. Who knows just how much current it would take to melt it.
Arc welding is very common - on/off switches or plugs for the welders are not. They would usually scrape off some insulation on the power line, cut off the plug on the end of the electric cord, bend the wires into a hook and set into place. To turn the machine off one swats in the general direction of the wires until they disconnect.
The electric showerheads never gave me any major problems - except for the time the americans spliced the wires with masking tape. Everybody said that they were perfectly safe (to reassume me, I suppose) but I never heard of anybody who had been electrocuted, nor did I ever meet anybody who had even heard of somebody getting zapped. Again, maybe they were just trying to reassume me.
By the way, I found a picture of the showerhead... something that most people in this country (or many other countries) have ever seen. (I didn't read the article there, just found the picture.)
As the water flows the pressure would close a switch inside the showerhead and heat the water electrically as it sprayed out. Costa Ricas tend to be shorter than Americans so these pipes are invariably mounted about 5'10" off the ground, forcing many to squat down a little bit to get under the head. An accidental brush up against the showerhead with give you a quick reminder to squat back down again. The unfortunately arrival of a moderate earthquake (fairly common) could also bring about a zap.
In one apartment the occupants (Americans, actually - Costa Ricans aren't this stupid) had spliced the wiring (120V @ 50Hz IIRC +/- 10% to allow for the ever-changing conditions on the line) with masking tape. I happened to be in there at the moment the tape burst into flames making me one of the only people in the history of the world to have been using a shower that caught fire.
a) require that at least 51% of the rights to a patent remain with the actual inventor
b) grant patents only to the individual who actually made the discovery or came up with the idea
c) eliminate the first to file silliness
problems (mostly) solved.
No matter how bad things are, congress can always make them worse.
I am deeply bothered by the excessive compensation that these people have granted to themselves. $170,000/year is far and away too much money to pay these people, especially considering all of the additional perks (they have given themselves, without oversight). Remember, immediately after accepting this COLA these people slashed $700,000,000 from food stamp programs. People in Congress should not get COLAs: it would be perfectly reasonable to require them to introduce legislation every time they want more money, do a roll call vote on it, then wait until after the next election to see if their constituents agree that they deserve making more than 3x the annual salary of most normal people.
And no, I don't particularly care about reforming government - most people are perfectly happy with the way things are now. Along the lines of what the Sony chief said, most people don't understand (PATRIOT, RIAA/MPAA abuses, stupidity in the patent office, the flagrant Constitutional abuses of the Mickey Mouse Preservaton Act(s), budget defecits and the like) so why should anybody expect that they will care? And if they don't care, I won't care.
Your Rep - and all of the others - are pushing the nation closer to bankruptcy. They are recklessly spending money hand over fist today fully aware that the next generation is going to have to clean up the mess. The economics of the system is simply and undeniably unsustainable. Your rep has consistently refused to introduce legislation to keep terrorists from walking across the US/MX border. Your rep has consistently refused to introduce legislation to prevent the US Government from attempting to hide large sections of its activities by classifying everything. Your rep has repeatedly refused to openly call for the arrest of those federal employees who are still drawing pensions for conducting secret medical tests on US prisoners. Your rep has repeatedly refused to introduce legislation to hold government employees accountable for their abuses and mistakes.
But your rep came out and said that torture is bad - that makes it all worth it, right?
Collectively, the US Congress as a body is corrupt, inefficient, generally stupid, lazy, cowardly and overall a bad thing. But each and every member there has constituents - such as yourself - who swear that "the problem lies with all of the other electees - my rep is the greatest thing since sliced bread", so nothing will ever change. A handful of good votes does not counter all of the collective flawed mandates - your rep is unquestionably part of the problem. They all need to be replaced, we all know they won't be. Incumbents are virtually impossible to force out of office so they will continue to make bad decision after bad decision and lead this country down the wrong path.
But, as you pointed out, most of the constituents in this country don't care - their rep (or senator... can't leave them out) is perfect, so you need to keep sending the one vote of fresh air back to the hill.
Rep Markey has also worked to circumvent the 27th Amendment of the United States and has happily accepted pay raise after pay rai... oops... excuse me... his most recent salary adjustment wasn't a raise, it was a cost of living adjustment. Varying the starting representative's salary upwards by an extra $3,100/year to almost $170,000/year isn't covered by the text "No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened." because COLAs aren't salary variations, say the judges with retirement benefits directly keyed to congressional salaries.
I am also strongly opposed to the concept that "a Federal workforce of passenger and baggage screeners is more responsive to the public than the private sector" (he sponsored HR2649) and the thought of unionized airport screeners is nauseating ("all employees of the Transportation Security Administration, including Federal airport screeners, should be permitted to engage in collective bargaining and be represented in collective bargaining by a representative or organization of their choosing"). If you think screeners are tough to fire now when they are caught stealing things from your bags, just wait until they are fully unionized.
Some would that that HR3710 is a good thought - royalty relief for gas and oil companies - except this is nothing more than an additional tax that will be passed on to consumers.
However, when I asked if Van Zant would even consider moving to somebody other than Sony when the current contract ended, there was no comment. Meaning no, they won't. And here, people, is the proof. And the pudding. In a nice silver serving dish. Van Zant is making lots and lots of money from Sony - this is a good thing. I believe people should be allowed to try and make as much money as they can or want. But Van Zant is making money at the expense of their fans. If they respected their fans, they would make it clear and public that as soon as they can they would leave Sony. But they are being paid too much to do so. I would hope that the people who comprise the free market would vote with their feet, but we all know that isn't going to happen. Sony is going to continue to make billions of dollars selling CDs to people. Van Zant is going to continue to receive their millions from Sony. The world continues spinning.
For every act of good that your incumbent US rep engaged in I'll bet he has hundreds of acts of bad. Chances are he voted for the bridges to nowhere, the patriot act, DMCA and is openly refusing to even pretend that he believes in fiscal responsibility. Odds are exceptionally high that your congresscritter doesn't have any significant problem with the intrusive and ineffective state of airport security, has no issue with Haliburton billing the federal government $85/hour to hire illegal immigrants at $5/hour to rebuild New Orleans and doesn't particularly care that the US Military routinely hides blatant environmental destruction (such as open dumping of toxic waste at groom lake) and personal embarassment by classifying the whole thing.
Your US rep gladly accepts pay hike after pay hike in clear and direct violation of the spirit and intent of amendment XXVII.
There are lots of people out there who would be more than happy to champion the cause of ending extraordinary rendition and wouldn't be rushing to kiss the posterior of the RIAA/MPAA, the FBI, the NSA, the CIA.
The odds are that your congressman voted for CAN SPAM, the Mickey Mouse preservation act, approved $100,000 for the Tiger Woods Foundation, 5.5 million dollars for HAARP (suspected in an article of Scientific American to have caused an outbreak of deadly tornados in Florida), $36 million for the C130-J (a craft the defense department deemed unsatisfactory, and $3 million dollars a year for the Department of Energy to run a golf course in the Southwestern United States.
Politicians suck. They lie. They cheat. They steal.
And worst of all, they are returned to power time and time again by people like you who focus on a single, obvious, anybody with a shread of decency would do the same, no-brainer act of good and declare this to outweigh all of the bad.
The harm your congressman has brought to the nation greatly outweighs any positive action. While your rep is opposing sending people to foreign countries so they can be tortured but still passes the *&@#^$! appropriations bills that gives the CIA money to carry this out it isn't enough. Enron's chief (probably) opposes kicking puppies - so let's keep him in power forever?
First4internet is fully responsible for the the security holes in the code, and - as I understand - the copyright violation (unless the stolen algorhythm was something that Sony put on top of f4i's code).
What about the poor schmuck just excited about going off to visit his mistress? Or his girlfriend, knowing he's about to get his first action in 9 months? Or any member of Congress?
I am pretty sick and tired of these jerkwads coming out with all of this technology that is supposed to protect us from somebody who has nothing better to do all day long than figure out ways to hurt us. And stick me with billions of dollars in expenses for a technology that may or may not catch somebody other than the occasional innocent git or two-bit martyr wanna be. Does it work? "Sorry, for national security reasons we can't tell you how many bad guys we caught or how many innocent guys to whom we gave a cavity probe".
Money isn't the root of all evil anybody who votes for any incumbent is.
Sony paid for it. Sony included it. But first4internet wrote the code.
Go fetch, boy! Go fetch the little robot!
If DHS wants to grab more power and start pretending to be concerned with zombies then sure.. fine.. whatever. (I've abandoned any hope that anything will ever stop the relentless power grab of the federales) BUT Sony's DRM is so far below Microsoft (without whom most botnets would be impossible) on the zombie risk scale that... well, let's just say that the people making these threat assessments wouldn't quality for mensa. Or densa.
Fair enough, but the millions of zombies hosted by comcast, bellsouth.net, or SBC doesn't interest them, the massive security flaws that allow any Microsoft machine to become a zombie just by connecting it to the internet and going for a pizza don't interest them, but a Van Zant (and other) CDs elicit a response from the tier 1 level?
Pardon my cynicism but I suspect that -this- received the attention because no matter what people will always buy broadband internet and people will always buy Microsoft but the paranoid with the amplifying tinfoil hats just might start to demand oversight of DRM technologies to the point where the major congressional donors of the RIAA/MPAA might suffer an induced case of the fidgets.
(Not that there's much danger of that... at this moment the #1 selling album on amazon is 12 Songs [Content/Copy-Protected CD] by Neil Diamond).