I do. All the time. And I own a hardware Kindle, too. But the Kindle app on the iPod Touch is *much* better (brighter, faster, lighter, better contrast, less eye movement, easier to hold, works in the dark, no ghosting, totally one-handed use, tons more storage.) Of the five font sizes, I use the three smallest depending on how much movement is going on. Passenger in a car, middle size. Late at night, still in bed, I use the smallest size. Otherwise, the next to smallest size. While I'm reading, my iPod Touch is checking my email, my chess games, my Words with Friends games (similar to Scrabble), allows me instant access to the weather, checks my servers to make sure they're all up and accessible, basically all kinds of apps, plays my favorite music for me, fits in my pocket, handles LOTS of other e-reader formats including PDF, in full color... downside? I have to charge it about once a day... which doesn't stop me from using it, it just temporarily (and vaguely) tethers me to the car, couch, desk or bed. Big whoop.
This is why I don't even bother with the hardware Kindle. It's also why I'm very interested to see what Apple does with the hopefully forthcoming tablet. Not holding my breath after the no-camera, no-GPS iPod non-release last cycle, but one can hope.:)
I think that's probably exactly right; no real mention of such things, though, not that you'd expect it - probably just assumed it was normal and had to be dealt with.
Yeah. That's why everybody had a life expectancy > 100 years before antibiotics were discovered.
You know, there's a lot of misunderstanding about that. I've got the family genealogy back to about 1575, and a lot of the adults in the family lived into their 70's or eighties and a surprising number even longer than that. But the average age of death? Still about age thirty. You know why? Infant and child mortality. Lots and lots of dead babies and very young children. But for those who made it to adulthood, they lived pretty long. They not only did that without a lot of efficacious drugs, they did in the face of a lot of quack medicine and what we would consider very bad habits.
CA's aren't supposed to guarantee that their customers are trustworthy. The only thing a certificate is for is to verify that internet traffic is coming from who it says it's coming from. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.
Certificates don't verify who traffic is coming from. All you need to do is move a certificate from one machine to another, hack a few routing/DNS issues, light off a web server, and the traffic is now coming from someone else, and the certificate still works fine.
Certificates (well, SSL, more to the point) see to it that your data is encrypted such that third parties can't get at it. They also ensure that the name the certificate is issued to (plunderthenet.com) is the one you connect to. This, however, only confuses the surfer into thinking that they must be connected to the people who registered plunderthenet.com, which may or may not be the case.
Certificate authorities are a scam; they have always been a scam. They do nothing actually useful, they simply perpetrate an illusion for profit.
You can suggest it. And in return, I suggest you learn what the constitution is: the authorizing document for the federal and state government, and all law that said government makes. It isn't law, then constitution. It's the other way around. When the government violates the constitution, it's not operating in an authorized manner. You can quote contrary law (and contrary judicial decisions) until you're blue in the face and you'll be completely wrong because your first principles are wrong.
Any time a Fourth Amendment rights violation occurs, any case, at any level, DIES on the spot and any evidence that stems from that violation must be discarded along with the case. Period.
No. For instance, the constitution does not authorize any search unless it is reasonable, and it defines reasonable as showing probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and the subsequent generation of a warrant. The country is pervaded by searches that violate the requirement; and they don't kill the cases, nor is the evidence discarded. There are search laws for within X miles of the border; there are search laws for searching US citizens at the border; there are search laws for searching people's cars, homes, and etc., all without complying with amendment IV. So you're completely wrong here. next:
It's just that you can't presume that the government has ANY requirements to observe the Bill of Rights restrictions on their activities
The constitution - also known as the highest law in the land - forbids such laws and activities to the federal government. So you can indeed presume that they cannot do so - they are not authorized to do so. If they do such things, they are in violation of the law.
For example, in the decision of U.S. vs. JOHNSON (76 Fed, Supp. 538), Judge Fee states:
Read amendment four. Find me where it states anything about "only people how fight get these rights. Back yet? Didn't work out so well, did it? It doesn't say, or imply, or reference, any such thing, anywhere. So the fact is, Judge Fee is making law where he has no authority to do so.
Your rights in this space are NOT automatic. You must insist upon them and they must actually apply. The reason why they "don't have teeth", etc. is because NOBODY seems to be willing to actually challenge each in every one of these when they encounter them for reasons of "you can't fight city hall", etc.
No. You miss the entire point. When I say that the constitution has no teeth, I mean that when government stooges like Judge Fee enter into unauthorized lawmaking such as your fine example above, which is the very first step and the primary responsible step in unauthorized government power acquisition, there's nothing in or about the constitution that says, for instance "...and if any government official or member of the judiciary violates this portion of the constitution, they shall be hung by the neck until dead." People like Fee can do anything they want, because the constitution is a paper full of laws without consequences. It'd be like a law that said you can't drive over 50 miles an hour, but authorized no fine, no license pulling, no insurance fee changing, no pulling you over, no nothing. It just says you can't speed. Such a law is absolutely toothless, unable to control you in any wise; and that is exactly how the constitution is written. It isn't about the defense of rights in a courtroom by the citizen; it's about a complete lack of defense against the government disobeying the authorizing document that gives them the right to exist in a very specific manner, and no other manner.
...you could actually be ignorant of the pervasive violations in the constitutional areas I named. The government -- by which I mean the congress and the supreme court, and all the courts below them, consistently step far out of constitutional bounds, just as they are now.
Ex post facto law is forbidden both the federal and state governments. Both have made such law and use it presently; two good examples are removing the right to carry firearms post-sentencing for felons, which increases their sentence exactly per the definition[3d], and registering sexual offenders post-sentencing, which does the same. The constitution says in article I, section 9: No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. That takes care of the feds. In Article I, section 10: No State shall... pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law. That takes care of the states. That SCOTUS has attempted in "that depends on what you mean by 'is'" fashion to redefine punishment as only some of the content of judicially ordered consequences only serves to solidly implicate SCOTUS in the crime of constitutional violation, and in fact is exactly the type of Article III attempt to pursue article V goals I was mentioning previously. There is no constitutional authority for judges - at any level - to define, or redefine, what the constitution means. Article III does not provide for it, nor does article V reference article III by jot or tittle. Article three assigns SCOTUS to sit in judgment on constitutional law cases. Not to make or judge constitutional law itself. Obviously they have usurped this power, but READ the constitution: It is not given them, and therefore it is wholly unauthorized.
First amendment violations are everywhere. "Free speech zones." No speech within X distance of a funeral. Permits required for public meetings. The classic, and totally wrong, "no shouting fire in a theater" (we shout "fire" in schools... we call it a "fire drill" and there is no problem - and those are kids! We're all trained for it. Further, if someone trampled someone else, THAT is a crime and we have laws for it, thereby obviating ANY supposed social need for violating the 1st amendment in the trumped-up theater example.) Suppression of comic artwork that offends (and that's all it is, because there is certainly no "victim.") The FCC forbidding ANY significant citizen use of the broadcast bands, and handing them over tied with a neat bow to corporations. The bottom line here is that the 1st amendment reads: Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech and so barring exercise of article V, no law such as the above is authorized. Consequently, these are all solid examples of unauthorized exercise of power, ie, government out of control.
2nd amendment violations are everywhere. The 2nd amendment reads: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. For those who cannot be bothered to do a little research, "well regulated" means "everyone should show up bearing a specific minimum number of bullets, arms and comparable ready equipment", not "subject to regulations." "Militia" means capable fellows of fighting age. Not "national guard" or "army." They're simply saying that in order that it may be possible to immediately gather useful fighting folk from the populace at any time, ready to go in a reasonably organized fashion on literally no more than hours notice, said fighting folk are going to need to be armed. Regardless, that phrase is not a directive to the government, it is explicatory, that is, simply shows some of the rationale they were using at the time. The operative phrase is the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Well, that's pretty damned clear, isn't it? Are there laws that infringe on the rights
"A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can be taken without warrants, have their property seized, be securely imprisoned, not be given access to lawyers, or even a phone call, get waterboarded, give up all their co-conspirators, and disappear forever." --fyngyrz
The 4th amendment is valid no matter what. The constitution provides the authorizing mechanism for the US federal government, and to some extent, the state governments; from the definitions therein, there are only two kinds of power: Authorized powers, which comply with the constitutional requirements, and unauthorized powers, which do not.
The federal government is deep into the use of unauthorized powers, the most egregious of which are: Ex post facto laws, violations of the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th and 10th amendments, inversion of the commerce clause, and asserting article V powers (which require massive co-operation from the congress and the people) via direct misuse of article III, which manifests as a stroke of a judge's pen.
Because the constitution has no teeth, that is, there is no punishment of any kind defined for stepping outside the bounds it defines, there is no control mechanism available. Further, the government continues to create a web of unauthorized law to cover its tracks.
Consequently, any relief -- in the constitutional sense -- for any government use of unauthorized power, is impossible to obtain working within the system.
I don't deny anything. I simply don't believe, because I've never seen anything that has even the slightest weight in favor of the various claims of theism. The only thing I object to is the imposition of religious behaviors upon me by the religious. For instance, if they don't want to drink beer on Sunday, then by George, I think that's just fabulous. However, if I wish to drink beer on Sunday, and they move to stop me - for instance by forcing stores not to sell beer to me - well, now we have a problem, and they have just become my enemy by stepping on my liberties. You'll note this opposition arises without any attempt by me to deny the religious their beliefs, or the truth of them, etc.
Religion, like any other highly personal set of choices, should remain between one's self and other consenting adults. As soon as you force it, or material consequences of it, upon someone else, you're pond scum. And that's being unkind to pond scum. Irish lawmakers have today joined this damp, respect-free group.
...because atheism isn't a religion. Being atheist is simply the state of being without a belief in a god or gods. There is no dogma, no canon, no "book of how to behave", no punishment, no reward. It's just a lack of belief. Atheism doesn't define a person's outlook, behavior, morals or ethics. Atheism is the condition of trundling forward in life without said beliefs. That's all it is. So you can, and you will, encounter atheists who despise theism, atheists who don't care about theism, and atheists that are very interested in it for any number of reasons. Each will have their own way of dealing with life, because, and I am really repeating myself here, atheism contains no instructions of "how to" anything.
As some (very clever) wag has said: If atheism is a religion, then bald is a hair color.
...and Ireland joins other butt-ignorant countries like Saudi Arabia, while here in the USA, freedom of speech reigns paramount.
Well, except in theaters, and near funerals, and at political rallies (unless you're in a "free speech zone" some distance away)...
And some art, well, we just can't have people looking at (or even creating) that...
It'd be nice if congress fixed these things. But of course, we have to wait for them to finish their prayers before they can get started. Oh, and the blessing. By a preacher paid for with tax money.
Maybe you can remind me. What Apple product is the Ribbon concept ripped-off from?
Yeah, it's actually closer to a knockoff of the WinImages Chapter/Verse bar than it is any Apple product. And it is way faster than digging through menus, if you're using the GUI. If it's keyboard shortcuts you are used to, it's the same speed.
I suggest getting a small machine emulation like a 6800, 6809 or 8080, and teaching him assembler so he knows what's actually going on. Then teach him C, and explain what's going on there in terms of assembling and linking. Then teach him C++, then teach him python. That'll give him an expanding world he understands right down to the metal.
30-60 seconds won't screw up your shadow ID. Motion triggers might, but they miss slow movement and are easily fooled by camouflage, and so are very poor choices for incursion detection. Again, I doubt even drug-war-addled feds are that stupid.
On land, "sunset" can be when the sun drops behind a hill. This is part of the reason I don't keep a sextant in my car.
No. You're missing the point. Local noon is when the sun is straight up. When shadows go to minimum, or change sides. It's pretty obvious, if you've been outdoors a bit. Once you ID noon, you have every other hour. This tells you where you are, east west. And, because you're on the border, which, while not straight, is at least generally east west, the north south position is determined as well. From there, the FOV of the camera is the final determination.
The only way this wouldn't work would be if the feed wasn't live and the delay isn't known, as someone pointed out above; but then again, if the feed isn't live, it isn't going to catch anyone, either, so I don't see a problem. I doubt even drug-war addled feds are that stupid. Well, some of them must not be, anyway.
Ahem. If you're supposed to detect passage of illegals on a feed that isn't real time... well, the planners of such stupidity will deserve what they get, which will no doubt be nothing. Unless it's a live feed, which of course is the only reasonable course here.
The various Texas border regions are approximately 100,000 square miles. Finding a pinhole camera over such a large area is akin to looking for a specific grain of sand on the beach.
Please. This isn't even slightly tricky. Time the sunset / shadows. That gives you the east-west position (and very accurately, too.) Local noon identifies local midnight (and every other local time) perfectly. So does sunset. Since the cameras are on the border, that reduces the problem to a very small one -- what portion(s) of the border match those times. Then go there (using GPS and holding a pic of the POV of the camera)... walk right up to it, grab it, throw it in the 4WD. Rinse, repeat. If the cameras are observing places where people can go, they're in places where people can get at them.
Also, borders aren't "square miles", they are linear miles. The problem is not as intractable as you want to think it is.
Offer me fifty grand per camera, as well as guaranteed legal immunity, and I'll go down there and hand the vast majority of em to you in a dusty heap in, oh, a couple of weeks or so. It'd be fun.:)
My point is, if you have this session with someone lying off moderately to the right of the Gaussian center -- say, 120 or so -- most, possibly all, of those subjects will yield intelligent, interesting responses and you're likely to be taken off point into other interesting subject matter.
Because many subjects are "under the hat", as it were, they all benefit from cross synthesis of ideas, of understanding, of interaction (or lack thereof.)
Here on slashdot, where technical people tend to congregate, and the environment is a bit harsh when you don't know what you're talking about, the part of the curve you're talking to, as it were, is strongly biased to the right side. These people - me, probably you, almost everyone else here - are not middle or left Gaussian types, nor do we tend to work with them. Programmers, engineers, technicians, scientists... they are not middle/left folk. Period.
So I'm suggesting -- with 55 years of social experience with many people to back me up -- that if you drag your optimistic butt out and actually do what I said, that you will learn something about who the masses are in terms of their understanding of the world they live in, and the types of contributions they are likely to make to it.
If that's not clear enough for you, or can't overcome a perception you have, then there's nothing more to say about it. Doesn't affect me either way; the world is what it is, political correctness doesn't magically make people smarter or more informed.
The short version is: We're only as equal as we are. We are not all created equal, and even with the best intent to offer equal opportunity to all, equality is a myth and will remain so until/unless we get a lot better handle on genetic engineering than we have now. And guess what... that's not going to be coming from the middle or left of the Gaussian, either.
If it's so much better to run a small grid, why not simply do that? Feel free to divide the US into as many pieces as you like.
Reliability is not the only metric for "better." There is also cost; there is also efficiency; there are also materials issues; there are issues with smaller plants. So while a smaller network is, in fact, less vulnerable to many things -- weather, accident, imbalance -- it still doesn't follow that multiple small networks will outperform large, interconnected networks in general.
The grids are interconnected in order to be able to back up each other when there is a local failure; they are interconnected because power is produced in very large quantities in order to take advantage of economies of scale; they are interconnected because it takes fewer connections to build a redundant network than it does to create multiple isolated grids (if you had the small power sources to do so, which we don't); they are interconnected so that plants can be taken down for maintainance, yet the areas they normally serve can still receive power. For instance, the Pacific intertie carries 3100 megawatts, usually towards Los Angeles -- but not always. It depends on conditions, sometimes power goes the other way.
I've lived in south africa most of my life, and there were only power outages where Iived starting about a year/a year and a half, ago. Since moving to the UK I've not had any power outages. why is American electricity so unstable?
I have a saltwater aquarium. The fish are my wards -- I am literally responsible for their entire environment. If that doesn't move you, consider that a single saltwater fish may be anywhere from $10 to several hundred dollars, corals likewise.
A generator capable of supporting the tank (and the furnace, and the frig) is a few hundred bucks. The wiring can be done by any moderately competent geek for not much at all. It's a simple decision.
Slashdot Mirror
I do. All the time. And I own a hardware Kindle, too. But the Kindle app on the iPod Touch is *much* better (brighter, faster, lighter, better contrast, less eye movement, easier to hold, works in the dark, no ghosting, totally one-handed use, tons more storage.) Of the five font sizes, I use the three smallest depending on how much movement is going on. Passenger in a car, middle size. Late at night, still in bed, I use the smallest size. Otherwise, the next to smallest size. While I'm reading, my iPod Touch is checking my email, my chess games, my Words with Friends games (similar to Scrabble), allows me instant access to the weather, checks my servers to make sure they're all up and accessible, basically all kinds of apps, plays my favorite music for me, fits in my pocket, handles LOTS of other e-reader formats including PDF, in full color... downside? I have to charge it about once a day... which doesn't stop me from using it, it just temporarily (and vaguely) tethers me to the car, couch, desk or bed. Big whoop.
This is why I don't even bother with the hardware Kindle. It's also why I'm very interested to see what Apple does with the hopefully forthcoming tablet. Not holding my breath after the no-camera, no-GPS iPod non-release last cycle, but one can hope. :)
I think that's probably exactly right; no real mention of such things, though, not that you'd expect it - probably just assumed it was normal and had to be dealt with.
You know, there's a lot of misunderstanding about that. I've got the family genealogy back to about 1575, and a lot of the adults in the family lived into their 70's or eighties and a surprising number even longer than that. But the average age of death? Still about age thirty. You know why? Infant and child mortality. Lots and lots of dead babies and very young children. But for those who made it to adulthood, they lived pretty long. They not only did that without a lot of efficacious drugs, they did in the face of a lot of quack medicine and what we would consider very bad habits.
Certificates don't verify who traffic is coming from. All you need to do is move a certificate from one machine to another, hack a few routing/DNS issues, light off a web server, and the traffic is now coming from someone else, and the certificate still works fine.
Certificates (well, SSL, more to the point) see to it that your data is encrypted such that third parties can't get at it. They also ensure that the name the certificate is issued to (plunderthenet.com) is the one you connect to. This, however, only confuses the surfer into thinking that they must be connected to the people who registered plunderthenet.com, which may or may not be the case.
Certificate authorities are a scam; they have always been a scam. They do nothing actually useful, they simply perpetrate an illusion for profit.
You can suggest it. And in return, I suggest you learn what the constitution is: the authorizing document for the federal and state government, and all law that said government makes. It isn't law, then constitution. It's the other way around. When the government violates the constitution, it's not operating in an authorized manner. You can quote contrary law (and contrary judicial decisions) until you're blue in the face and you'll be completely wrong because your first principles are wrong.
Yes? Well, let's see.
No. For instance, the constitution does not authorize any search unless it is reasonable, and it defines reasonable as showing probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and the subsequent generation of a warrant. The country is pervaded by searches that violate the requirement; and they don't kill the cases, nor is the evidence discarded. There are search laws for within X miles of the border; there are search laws for searching US citizens at the border; there are search laws for searching people's cars, homes, and etc., all without complying with amendment IV. So you're completely wrong here. next:
The constitution - also known as the highest law in the land - forbids such laws and activities to the federal government. So you can indeed presume that they cannot do so - they are not authorized to do so. If they do such things, they are in violation of the law.
Read amendment four. Find me where it states anything about "only people how fight get these rights. Back yet? Didn't work out so well, did it? It doesn't say, or imply, or reference, any such thing, anywhere. So the fact is, Judge Fee is making law where he has no authority to do so.
No. You miss the entire point. When I say that the constitution has no teeth, I mean that when government stooges like Judge Fee enter into unauthorized lawmaking such as your fine example above, which is the very first step and the primary responsible step in unauthorized government power acquisition, there's nothing in or about the constitution that says, for instance "...and if any government official or member of the judiciary violates this portion of the constitution, they shall be hung by the neck until dead." People like Fee can do anything they want, because the constitution is a paper full of laws without consequences. It'd be like a law that said you can't drive over 50 miles an hour, but authorized no fine, no license pulling, no insurance fee changing, no pulling you over, no nothing. It just says you can't speed. Such a law is absolutely toothless, unable to control you in any wise; and that is exactly how the constitution is written. It isn't about the defense of rights in a courtroom by the citizen; it's about a complete lack of defense against the government disobeying the authorizing document that gives them the right to exist in a very specific manner, and no other manner.
Ex post facto law is forbidden both the federal and state governments. Both have made such law and use it presently; two good examples are removing the right to carry firearms post-sentencing for felons, which increases their sentence exactly per the definition[3d], and registering sexual offenders post-sentencing, which does the same. The constitution says in article I, section 9: No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. That takes care of the feds. In Article I, section 10: No State shall ... pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law. That takes care of the states. That SCOTUS has attempted in "that depends on what you mean by 'is'" fashion to redefine punishment as only some of the content of judicially ordered consequences only serves to solidly implicate SCOTUS in the crime of constitutional violation, and in fact is exactly the type of Article III attempt to pursue article V goals I was mentioning previously. There is no constitutional authority for judges - at any level - to define, or redefine, what the constitution means. Article III does not provide for it, nor does article V reference article III by jot or tittle. Article three assigns SCOTUS to sit in judgment on constitutional law cases. Not to make or judge constitutional law itself. Obviously they have usurped this power, but READ the constitution: It is not given them, and therefore it is wholly unauthorized.
First amendment violations are everywhere. "Free speech zones." No speech within X distance of a funeral. Permits required for public meetings. The classic, and totally wrong, "no shouting fire in a theater" (we shout "fire" in schools... we call it a "fire drill" and there is no problem - and those are kids! We're all trained for it. Further, if someone trampled someone else, THAT is a crime and we have laws for it, thereby obviating ANY supposed social need for violating the 1st amendment in the trumped-up theater example.) Suppression of comic artwork that offends (and that's all it is, because there is certainly no "victim.") The FCC forbidding ANY significant citizen use of the broadcast bands, and handing them over tied with a neat bow to corporations. The bottom line here is that the 1st amendment reads: Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech and so barring exercise of article V, no law such as the above is authorized. Consequently, these are all solid examples of unauthorized exercise of power, ie, government out of control.
2nd amendment violations are everywhere. The 2nd amendment reads: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. For those who cannot be bothered to do a little research, "well regulated" means "everyone should show up bearing a specific minimum number of bullets, arms and comparable ready equipment", not "subject to regulations." "Militia" means capable fellows of fighting age. Not "national guard" or "army." They're simply saying that in order that it may be possible to immediately gather useful fighting folk from the populace at any time, ready to go in a reasonably organized fashion on literally no more than hours notice, said fighting folk are going to need to be armed. Regardless, that phrase is not a directive to the government, it is explicatory, that is, simply shows some of the rationale they were using at the time. The operative phrase is the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Well, that's pretty damned clear, isn't it? Are there laws that infringe on the rights
"A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can be taken without warrants, have their property seized, be securely imprisoned, not be given access to lawyers, or even a phone call, get waterboarded, give up all their co-conspirators, and disappear forever." --fyngyrz
The 4th amendment is valid no matter what. The constitution provides the authorizing mechanism for the US federal government, and to some extent, the state governments; from the definitions therein, there are only two kinds of power: Authorized powers, which comply with the constitutional requirements, and unauthorized powers, which do not.
The federal government is deep into the use of unauthorized powers, the most egregious of which are: Ex post facto laws, violations of the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th and 10th amendments, inversion of the commerce clause, and asserting article V powers (which require massive co-operation from the congress and the people) via direct misuse of article III, which manifests as a stroke of a judge's pen.
Because the constitution has no teeth, that is, there is no punishment of any kind defined for stepping outside the bounds it defines, there is no control mechanism available. Further, the government continues to create a web of unauthorized law to cover its tracks.
Consequently, any relief -- in the constitutional sense -- for any government use of unauthorized power, is impossible to obtain working within the system.
I don't deny anything. I simply don't believe, because I've never seen anything that has even the slightest weight in favor of the various claims of theism. The only thing I object to is the imposition of religious behaviors upon me by the religious. For instance, if they don't want to drink beer on Sunday, then by George, I think that's just fabulous. However, if I wish to drink beer on Sunday, and they move to stop me - for instance by forcing stores not to sell beer to me - well, now we have a problem, and they have just become my enemy by stepping on my liberties. You'll note this opposition arises without any attempt by me to deny the religious their beliefs, or the truth of them, etc.
Religion, like any other highly personal set of choices, should remain between one's self and other consenting adults. As soon as you force it, or material consequences of it, upon someone else, you're pond scum. And that's being unkind to pond scum. Irish lawmakers have today joined this damp, respect-free group.
As some (very clever) wag has said: If atheism is a religion, then bald is a hair color.
Well, except in theaters, and near funerals, and at political rallies (unless you're in a "free speech zone" some distance away)...
And some art, well, we just can't have people looking at (or even creating) that...
It'd be nice if congress fixed these things. But of course, we have to wait for them to finish their prayers before they can get started. Oh, and the blessing. By a preacher paid for with tax money.
No, that's what a UPS is for. :)
Yeah, it's actually closer to a knockoff of the WinImages Chapter/Verse bar than it is any Apple product. And it is way faster than digging through menus, if you're using the GUI. If it's keyboard shortcuts you are used to, it's the same speed.
I suggest getting a small machine emulation like a 6800, 6809 or 8080, and teaching him assembler so he knows what's actually going on. Then teach him C, and explain what's going on there in terms of assembling and linking. Then teach him C++, then teach him python. That'll give him an expanding world he understands right down to the metal.
30-60 seconds won't screw up your shadow ID. Motion triggers might, but they miss slow movement and are easily fooled by camouflage, and so are very poor choices for incursion detection. Again, I doubt even drug-war-addled feds are that stupid.
No. You're missing the point. Local noon is when the sun is straight up. When shadows go to minimum, or change sides. It's pretty obvious, if you've been outdoors a bit. Once you ID noon, you have every other hour. This tells you where you are, east west. And, because you're on the border, which, while not straight, is at least generally east west, the north south position is determined as well. From there, the FOV of the camera is the final determination.
The only way this wouldn't work would be if the feed wasn't live and the delay isn't known, as someone pointed out above; but then again, if the feed isn't live, it isn't going to catch anyone, either, so I don't see a problem. I doubt even drug-war addled feds are that stupid. Well, some of them must not be, anyway.
Ahem. If you're supposed to detect passage of illegals on a feed that isn't real time... well, the planners of such stupidity will deserve what they get, which will no doubt be nothing. Unless it's a live feed, which of course is the only reasonable course here.
Please. This isn't even slightly tricky. Time the sunset / shadows. That gives you the east-west position (and very accurately, too.) Local noon identifies local midnight (and every other local time) perfectly. So does sunset. Since the cameras are on the border, that reduces the problem to a very small one -- what portion(s) of the border match those times. Then go there (using GPS and holding a pic of the POV of the camera)... walk right up to it, grab it, throw it in the 4WD. Rinse, repeat. If the cameras are observing places where people can go, they're in places where people can get at them.
Also, borders aren't "square miles", they are linear miles. The problem is not as intractable as you want to think it is.
Offer me fifty grand per camera, as well as guaranteed legal immunity, and I'll go down there and hand the vast majority of em to you in a dusty heap in, oh, a couple of weeks or so. It'd be fun. :)
My point is, if you have this session with someone lying off moderately to the right of the Gaussian center -- say, 120 or so -- most, possibly all, of those subjects will yield intelligent, interesting responses and you're likely to be taken off point into other interesting subject matter.
Because many subjects are "under the hat", as it were, they all benefit from cross synthesis of ideas, of understanding, of interaction (or lack thereof.)
Here on slashdot, where technical people tend to congregate, and the environment is a bit harsh when you don't know what you're talking about, the part of the curve you're talking to, as it were, is strongly biased to the right side. These people - me, probably you, almost everyone else here - are not middle or left Gaussian types, nor do we tend to work with them. Programmers, engineers, technicians, scientists... they are not middle/left folk. Period.
So I'm suggesting -- with 55 years of social experience with many people to back me up -- that if you drag your optimistic butt out and actually do what I said, that you will learn something about who the masses are in terms of their understanding of the world they live in, and the types of contributions they are likely to make to it.
If that's not clear enough for you, or can't overcome a perception you have, then there's nothing more to say about it. Doesn't affect me either way; the world is what it is, political correctness doesn't magically make people smarter or more informed.
The short version is: We're only as equal as we are. We are not all created equal, and even with the best intent to offer equal opportunity to all, equality is a myth and will remain so until/unless we get a lot better handle on genetic engineering than we have now. And guess what... that's not going to be coming from the middle or left of the Gaussian, either.
Reliability is not the only metric for "better." There is also cost; there is also efficiency; there are also materials issues; there are issues with smaller plants. So while a smaller network is, in fact, less vulnerable to many things -- weather, accident, imbalance -- it still doesn't follow that multiple small networks will outperform large, interconnected networks in general.
The grids are interconnected in order to be able to back up each other when there is a local failure; they are interconnected because power is produced in very large quantities in order to take advantage of economies of scale; they are interconnected because it takes fewer connections to build a redundant network than it does to create multiple isolated grids (if you had the small power sources to do so, which we don't); they are interconnected so that plants can be taken down for maintainance, yet the areas they normally serve can still receive power. For instance, the Pacific intertie carries 3100 megawatts, usually towards Los Angeles -- but not always. It depends on conditions, sometimes power goes the other way.
Seriously?
You hang on slashdot, and you don't understand how as complexity increases, reliability degrades?
You don't understand that the longer a supply line is, the more opportunities for insult to that line?
I suggest some basic college courses. Technical ones. This isn't about a "power authority." It's about engineering.
One important factor:
I have a saltwater aquarium. The fish are my wards -- I am literally responsible for their entire environment. If that doesn't move you, consider that a single saltwater fish may be anywhere from $10 to several hundred dollars, corals likewise.
A generator capable of supporting the tank (and the furnace, and the frig) is a few hundred bucks. The wiring can be done by any moderately competent geek for not much at all. It's a simple decision.