The grave "Papers, please" fear-mongering is a bit overdone
Is it? When you can be placed on a "no fly" list for any reason, can't get off it, and can't even see it?
Is it? When you can be placed on a list that forbids anyone to sell you a car, open a bank account, hire you, and more, without any sort of judicial oversight or other legal process?
Is it? When your personal choices about what you can do to yourself, and with consenting partners, are the subject of draconian laws designed to make you comply with the personal opinions of others? When the use of a sex toy can land you jail? When the display of a banner at a parade can get you sanctioned?
I don't think so. I think privacy has become the last bastion of freedom, and there isn't a lot of it left as is. RealID is even worse than the "papers please" people think it is, because the country's treatment of free, law-abiding citizens - not to mention its treatment of those who have paid their debt to society for previous transgressions - has descended nearly to the level of the mid 20th century Soviet Union, and it is getting worse.
Sadly, they did fold like a bunch of zombies over speed limits when the feds threatened to pull highway funding.
Still, I'm kind of proud of them. They're doing a lot better than most states, and they show up the feds for the corporate teat-sucking tools they are.
How on earth does this contradict the Constitution?
I didn't say it did. I was responding to your error in assigning SCOTUS the role of telling us what is legal and what is not. That isn't what they are supposed to do. What they are supposed to do is delineated in article 3, section 2 of the constitution. That's it. Nothing else. Congress can legitimately make law; no other branch of the federal government can. SCOTUS can, if petitioned to do so, choose to examine that law in light of the constitution, and if that law contradicts the constitution, they can invalidate it.
Here it is:
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls; to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; to Controversies between two or more States; between a State and Citizens of another State; between Citizens of different States; between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
Furthermore, from article V:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
There isn't a word in there that allows judges in any venue to contradict the constitution. So they can't make law.
This about manufacturers being able to enter into contracts with the retailers they sell their products to.
No. It isn't. It is about the manufacturers being allowed to select dealers on the basis of compliance with policies that set resale prices. There is every reason for a wall between the seller and the buyer that forbids the seller from imposing post-sale conditions on the buyer. You're not looking at the big picture here.
Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech
What that kid did wasn't illegal. Period. What the school did, and subsequently the supreme court did, however, was. The supreme court has no constitutionally derived power to make law at all; any such power it is wielding is power it has illegally taken. Any member of the supreme court that moves to create a situation that is constitutionally forbidden is a criminal by virtue of having broken the highest law in the land.
No, the constitution does. it is literally the highest law in the land. When SCOTUS rules in a way that contradicts the constitution, they are not "telling us what is legal", they are simply being criminal. They belong in jail. Every one of them.
Oh wait, most Americans don't vote so, they got exactly what they put in. If you are that angry, get involved.
That is blatant nonsense. First, Americans can't vote on federal legislation. Second, Americans can't vote on supreme court members. Third, Americans can't control the political parties. Fourth, no person not a member of the two political parties and compliant with the two parties agenda can obtain power in congress. Fifth, almost no elected official even tries to do what they say they are going to do after they are elected (and they can't succeed unless that goal is in line with the goal of the two parties, anyway.) Sixth, the vast majority of power, specifically meaning control of legislation, in Washington is wielded by corporate and money-rich groups with specific interests that have nothing to do with the needs and wants of the average citizen.
"Voting" in the federal political process is no more than a sop to keep the citizens somewhat quiet and bewildered, part of a larger process involving propaganda), disenfranchisement, federal power grabs and more. It works, too; your post is a good example of someone who is under the completely mistaken impression that voting at the citizen level makes any difference at all at the federal level.
The largest voting swing seen in many years just put Democrats in power with the specific intent of getting us out of Iraq; are we out of Iraq? No. Has the funding for Iraq been altered? No. Have any deadlines been set? No. Has anything outside of a bunch of rhetoric been accomplished? No. Well, wait - some things got done: We have more troops in Iraq. We have more funding for the war. Haliburton has more income, more roles, more people working in Iraq. And more soldiers and Iraqi citizens have died. So yes, things are getting done, all right, it is just that, as per usual, they have nothing to do with what the majority of the voters want. Which tells you, if you'll just think for a moment, why some people don't bother to vote. It also completely breaks your idea that the current state of affairs can be laid at the feet of the non-voting.
The president is doing whatever he wants. He is refusing court orders, continuing his aggression on Iraq, issuing signing statements, ignoring the law, and generally making a hell of a mess. Congress and the Senate won't do squat, as they have repeatedly shown us both prior to and post the recent election. Your laying the responsibility for this mess at the feet of the citizens who don't vote is the ultimate act of bewilderment. It isn't the citizens who have set up this system; it is a relatively small group of political animals with money, power, and access.
However, you are right about one thing, even if only peripherally: The citizens do have the power to stop this bloody mess. As King George III of England found out.
It is bad for everyone. There are liberty aspects to be concerned with. If I buy something from you, just like a dealer, I own it. You no longer have any say in what I do with it, nor should you. If you do retain a say, then you have not actually sold me the item; only a share in it. Do we really want to support a commerce model that (further) dilutes the concept of ownership?
As near as I can tell, there is very little high level reasoning going on behind these kinds of decisions. Not that I expect such things from a constitutionally errant court that just said a US citizen couldn't display a banner in a public venue.
From your remark, I don't think you understood my post, because I was specifically addressing illegal (constitutionally forbidden) and immoral (anti-liberty) actions. I suggest you re-read the post. If you still have a problem with my remarks after that, quote the specific part, explain what you think I meant by it and make your objection, and I'll respond.
Well, yeah, but of course, I'm not following those orders. Duh. Bring this argument back up when conscription is introduced
I think it is important to recognize that there are other high levels of pressure than a direct chain of "you must serve, and in that service, you will do thus-and-such a bad thing."
For instance, US police and judiciary experience extreme degrees of pressure to abuse the citizens with laws that trample their liberties; drug laws, laws about sexuality, laws that range from seatbelts to helmets to building codes. Courts have to enforce coercive tax collection, the funds from which are then used to promulgate actions the taxed would never agree with under any circumstances, and so on. If these people refuse to perform these acts, they could be deemed criminals themselves, which is a pretty iron handed way of seeing that they don't do that. If they quit based on the idea that they are unwilling to do the job as it is defined, they don't solve the problem or in any other way remediate it except for themselves; the law will still be enforced, just by someone more compliant.
So I don't think we can really afford to put the issue aside unless conscription is involved.
kidnappings and assassinations? will there be investigations, the guilty punished
At the present time, the administration has defended torture, "extraordinary rendition" (AKA "kidnapping"), and started a war of aggression on a sovereign country by attempting to kill the leader with the first bombs dropped — which is simply assassination with a side order of collateral damage. So I think the odds favor medals awarded and certificates of thanks issued, rather than investigations, trials, and punishments.
What bad things were happening back then that they're not doing now?
Well, a few things actually do come to mind. Internment camps for citizens of Japanese descent. Compulsory sterilization of those deemed genetically inferior. McCarthy's campaign against "reds" and everything that went along with it. Exposing citizens and soldiers to things like LSD and radiation without their informed consent while knowing the effects were guaranteed to be pernicious.
By no means does remediating these behaviors serve to absolve the government; they have jumped right into new ones that are just as, if not more so, evil and short-sighted as those. The massive trend towards permanent vilification and permanent down-classing of people who are convicted of crimes; the pursuit of large scale military acts of outright aggression, previously unknown in US history (I'm speaking of the current war in Iraq primarily); the continuing conversion of citizen liberties into penalized behaviors based upon statistically unlikely and constitutionally unsound excuses; and speaking of the constitution, the continuing trend to ignore the intent of that document, I think, says more about the failures of today's government than does any other single issue. Though you can trace some of the problems I mentioned earlier in the paragraph directly to that trend.
perhaps we would be better focussing on how nations cannot protect themselves without an organization like this.
Perhaps we should be thinking that we don't need agencies like this at all. Perhaps we should get our government back to defending our borders, rather than interfering with other countries. Perhaps the very idea of the CIA is inherently flawed. Perhaps we could then further improve our situation by getting rid of a number of our other three-letter political tumors, such as the FCC, PTO, NSA, and ATF.
Perhaps our government should be spending its resources to build and/or enhance communications and other data/materials transport infrastructures so as to multiply the ability of the citizens to pursue productive lives. Maybe spend some time pruning out unconstitutional legislation, such as ex post facto laws, the inversion of the commerce clause, suppression of free speech, as well as an entire raft of "we know what is best for you" infringements upon personal liberty ranging from sexuality and drugs on the one hand to building codes and seat belts on the other.
Perhaps it should also get out of the business of subsidizing selected religions by (a) serving as a determining means as to what is, and what isn't, a religion and (b) providing religious institutions with monetary benefits such as tax exemptions which (c) cause the rest of the tax base to have to support the portion of the load that the religious institution would otherwise have to bear, and (d) continuing to allow corrosive religious expression in political venues (I'm speaking here of acts like prayer in congress, "blessings" from the president, mentions of "god" on money, etc.) acts that are surely as divisive and abusive of those who disagree with those religious expressions as is any other act of exclusion by category of belief(s).
Not that any of this could happen in the current social and political context, of course. Sad to say.
But in general, the U.S. is not evil and hasn't changed in the last 10 years. We'll have a new election.
A noble sentiment. However, I doubt it has much value as a means to console (for example) the victims killed in our war upon, and subsequent occupation of, Iraq. Or those held without access to legal representation. Or those who have been tortured.
The fact is, our political system is far too unresponsive to the will of the people, and while it may indeed, as you infer, be self-correcting over the long term, this does not seem to be sufficient because we don't live for the long term, we live for now. For some people, particularly victims of nationalist aggression like those in Iraq, now is all they'll ever have.
That is entirely aside from the domestic mess this president, vice president, and their political allies in the system have enhanced, created, and defended.
Too much Public Relation mumbo jumbo, not enough Engineering specifications.:-/
One thing to keep in mind is that such information is the core of a company's ability to deliver a product; if they share it, then other companies can use that information without having to put out for the research, thus providing a competitive advantage.
I would think that, having done the research and (hopefully) produced a product, these people would prefer that any competitors start with the same disadvantages they had. That provides a buffer in time for profiting from their work. It's just basic economics.
My company makes interesting products as well; on the web site, we talk about the results you can achieve, the things you can do — nowhere do we explain to you how we get these things done. Commercial efforts often have this characteristic in common.
It boggles the mind that anyone thinks that a body made up of the equivalent of pointy-haired bosses would know best.
Even that is a misconception. "Pointy haired bosses" have accountability; in the end, they must make a profit as a consequence of their choices or the company will fold, because in a commercial enterprise, funds result from sales of a product and/or service, and said sale is at the option of the consumer.
The government suffers no loss of income, regardless of how poorly they perform. In fact, they often increase their income if they determine that performance is lacking. In the US, that income is taken by coercion (the threat of force, not to mention the occasional use of force) from the populace as income taxes, except of course for those who think that paying income taxes for services not in the general population's best interests is a good thing.
For instance, paying for an adequate national defense is easily argued to be in the populace's best interests; paying for an expeditionary force that attacks oil-rich countries is not. Paying the salaries of congress-people who make constitutional laws is easily argued to be in the populace's best interests; paying for ex-post facto law, law that abolishes habeas corpus, law that attempts to limit personal, consensual choices and liberties... these are the fruits of a coercive government out of control — argument for them is nonsensical.
The model for coercive tax-based government is defective with regard to ensuring performance at any level other than the elected personages. Even there, the political parties have created an assembly line of essentially similar candidates. These preserve the status quo of service to big money interests, with the people's interests placed dead last.
So while you may be entirely justified with regard to your derisive characterization of commercial command structure, just remember that such people do respond to a built-in and ultimately terminal feedback mechanism that the people have control of. This is not the case for government, or at least, the US government, which is the one I am most familiar with.
How does it go? "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, enter politics."
Disclosure: I am both a teacher and a "pointy headed boss" of a series of successful commercial enterprises.
As for everything else - it's not a certainty - it's a speculation.
So according to your reasoning, it would be a bad move to plan on the number of transistors per unit area increasing in the future, right? Because that's not a stationary target either, and in precisely the same way.
When I see an industry has a steady record of improvements in a particular area, when I know they're working on further improvements, when they make it clear they expect to have the those same improvements in hand... I'm willing to do a little hand-waving and say, as I did above, that in a few years or a decade, we'll almost certainly see them come about.
In the case of ultracaps, I've even put my money where my mouth is and invested in the companies I think have good chances to bring these specific improvements to market. That's indicative of my level of confidence in both the technology and the people working to bring battery replacement about.
Nope.
You'll need a revolution in storage capacity of ultracaps just to get even with current batteries.
And the wisdom is - never count on a revolution in particular technology.
In electronics in general, that's not wisdom, that's blindness. Ultracaps have been increasing in capacity steadily, with leaps here and there as new technologies show up, such as the use of nano-materials. Ten years ago, large 15 volt capacitors were in microfarads. Five years ago, I got to drop a one farad cap into my car audio system. Today, one glance at the net finds 30 farad caps; here's a 58-farad, 15 volt cap that represents a considerable improvement over past years. There's plenty of progress and research going on here, and there is no reason to assume that it is anywhere near the potential limits. 3000 farad units are available now at lower (2.7v) voltages already; it's just a matter of time before the voltages come up further and the farad values increase further.
Don't get me wrong, revolutions happen all the time. It just you never know where to expect them.
This isn't revolution. It is evolution. Slow and steady. The slow makes it frustrating; the steady makes it all but inevitable.
You're not missing anything. 100% electric vehicles are where we're going, and it isn't batteries that are going to get us there, either. Hydrogen is way too hard to transport, store, and generate; ethanol requires the same wasteful tanker from here to there that gasoline does, plus puts an additional load on the food supply. Oil itself is far too useful to put in cars as fuel in any form for any longer than we absolutely have to.
A few years, maybe a decade, and ultracaps will simply crush all competing technologies. The distribution network is already there, local storage becomes practical at the same time as storage in the vehicle does, the efficiency gains of producing energy in large quantities is unbeatable, and for that matter, the gains from nuclear production of energy put all other polluting generation methods to shame. And of course, the non-polluting methods - hydro, solar, tidal, geothermal, wind, coupled with neat tricks like pumped storage... make electric a done deal. And of course, if you're a performance freak, there's no more pollution-free, controllable and easily delivered means to put horsepower to the ground than four electric motors. 1000 HP in a car? No technical reason why not. Other than you smearing yourself all over the landscape, that is. And with all that power available, you can still cruise at 30 HP on the freeway.;-)
What about the choice not to pay for channels we don't watch?
I agree. Although I'm not nearly as concerned with this as I am with the "indecency" regulation; censorship isn't a good idea under any circumstances, it is distressing to see it creep further into the realm of acceptability. It is also distressing to see how little commentary has been made here with regard to it, at least thus far. I don't want a small group of people regulating what everyone else can see. If people don't like something, they can turn it off, change the channel, or simply stop watching entirely. There's no reason the rest of us have to wear blinders and earplugs.
any logical human being who has studied the evidence for global warming will agree that historically there is a correlation between CO2 and temperature
Yes, there is. The historical correlation is that CO2 rises after the earth warms. This does not in any way support today's claims. Today's claims are based upon CO2 causing warming, not the historical "warming causes a rise in CO2."
If you want to sound authoritative, get your facts right. The GW model is not based upon historical CO2 events. It is based upon theories of a new sequence of events entirely.
Now, repeat after me: Historically speaking, CO2 rising events lag warming events, such rises have not led warming events. If this CO2 rise, certainly human caused (also different from the past), is leading a rise as the GW theories claim, this is a claim for a new sequence of events, not historically known to have happened.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it? When you can be placed on a "no fly" list for any reason, can't get off it, and can't even see it?
Is it? When you can be placed on a list that forbids anyone to sell you a car, open a bank account, hire you, and more, without any sort of judicial oversight or other legal process?
Is it? When your personal choices about what you can do to yourself, and with consenting partners, are the subject of draconian laws designed to make you comply with the personal opinions of others? When the use of a sex toy can land you jail? When the display of a banner at a parade can get you sanctioned?
I don't think so. I think privacy has become the last bastion of freedom, and there isn't a lot of it left as is. RealID is even worse than the "papers please" people think it is, because the country's treatment of free, law-abiding citizens - not to mention its treatment of those who have paid their debt to society for previous transgressions - has descended nearly to the level of the mid 20th century Soviet Union, and it is getting worse.
Montana was one of the first. It also rejected the idea of Eminent domain as a legitimate power able to take a citizen's property for the purpose of tax revenue. Plus the state isn't in debt (they actually run a balanced budget.)
Sadly, they did fold like a bunch of zombies over speed limits when the feds threatened to pull highway funding.
Still, I'm kind of proud of them. They're doing a lot better than most states, and they show up the feds for the corporate teat-sucking tools they are.
I didn't say it did. I was responding to your error in assigning SCOTUS the role of telling us what is legal and what is not. That isn't what they are supposed to do. What they are supposed to do is delineated in article 3, section 2 of the constitution. That's it. Nothing else. Congress can legitimately make law; no other branch of the federal government can. SCOTUS can, if petitioned to do so, choose to examine that law in light of the constitution, and if that law contradicts the constitution, they can invalidate it.
Here it is:
Furthermore, from article V:
There isn't a word in there that allows judges in any venue to contradict the constitution. So they can't make law.
No. It isn't. It is about the manufacturers being allowed to select dealers on the basis of compliance with policies that set resale prices. There is every reason for a wall between the seller and the buyer that forbids the seller from imposing post-sale conditions on the buyer. You're not looking at the big picture here.
The constitution says, and I directly quote:
What that kid did wasn't illegal. Period. What the school did, and subsequently the supreme court did, however, was. The supreme court has no constitutionally derived power to make law at all; any such power it is wielding is power it has illegally taken. Any member of the supreme court that moves to create a situation that is constitutionally forbidden is a criminal by virtue of having broken the highest law in the land.
No, the constitution does. it is literally the highest law in the land. When SCOTUS rules in a way that contradicts the constitution, they are not "telling us what is legal", they are simply being criminal. They belong in jail. Every one of them.
He did. A public one. Pretty funny, really. :-)
That is blatant nonsense. First, Americans can't vote on federal legislation. Second, Americans can't vote on supreme court members. Third, Americans can't control the political parties. Fourth, no person not a member of the two political parties and compliant with the two parties agenda can obtain power in congress. Fifth, almost no elected official even tries to do what they say they are going to do after they are elected (and they can't succeed unless that goal is in line with the goal of the two parties, anyway.) Sixth, the vast majority of power, specifically meaning control of legislation, in Washington is wielded by corporate and money-rich groups with specific interests that have nothing to do with the needs and wants of the average citizen.
"Voting" in the federal political process is no more than a sop to keep the citizens somewhat quiet and bewildered, part of a larger process involving propaganda), disenfranchisement, federal power grabs and more. It works, too; your post is a good example of someone who is under the completely mistaken impression that voting at the citizen level makes any difference at all at the federal level.
The largest voting swing seen in many years just put Democrats in power with the specific intent of getting us out of Iraq; are we out of Iraq? No. Has the funding for Iraq been altered? No. Have any deadlines been set? No. Has anything outside of a bunch of rhetoric been accomplished? No. Well, wait - some things got done: We have more troops in Iraq. We have more funding for the war. Haliburton has more income, more roles, more people working in Iraq. And more soldiers and Iraqi citizens have died. So yes, things are getting done, all right, it is just that, as per usual, they have nothing to do with what the majority of the voters want. Which tells you, if you'll just think for a moment, why some people don't bother to vote. It also completely breaks your idea that the current state of affairs can be laid at the feet of the non-voting.
The president is doing whatever he wants. He is refusing court orders, continuing his aggression on Iraq, issuing signing statements, ignoring the law, and generally making a hell of a mess. Congress and the Senate won't do squat, as they have repeatedly shown us both prior to and post the recent election. Your laying the responsibility for this mess at the feet of the citizens who don't vote is the ultimate act of bewilderment. It isn't the citizens who have set up this system; it is a relatively small group of political animals with money, power, and access.
However, you are right about one thing, even if only peripherally: The citizens do have the power to stop this bloody mess. As King George III of England found out.
It is bad for everyone. There are liberty aspects to be concerned with. If I buy something from you, just like a dealer, I own it. You no longer have any say in what I do with it, nor should you. If you do retain a say, then you have not actually sold me the item; only a share in it. Do we really want to support a commerce model that (further) dilutes the concept of ownership?
As near as I can tell, there is very little high level reasoning going on behind these kinds of decisions. Not that I expect such things from a constitutionally errant court that just said a US citizen couldn't display a banner in a public venue.
Found this in a closed-to-comments earlier slashdot story on Guitar Hero...
I'm a huge fan of GH, but I do actually play. :-)
From your remark, I don't think you understood my post, because I was specifically addressing illegal (constitutionally forbidden) and immoral (anti-liberty) actions. I suggest you re-read the post. If you still have a problem with my remarks after that, quote the specific part, explain what you think I meant by it and make your objection, and I'll respond.
I think it is important to recognize that there are other high levels of pressure than a direct chain of "you must serve, and in that service, you will do thus-and-such a bad thing."
For instance, US police and judiciary experience extreme degrees of pressure to abuse the citizens with laws that trample their liberties; drug laws, laws about sexuality, laws that range from seatbelts to helmets to building codes. Courts have to enforce coercive tax collection, the funds from which are then used to promulgate actions the taxed would never agree with under any circumstances, and so on. If these people refuse to perform these acts, they could be deemed criminals themselves, which is a pretty iron handed way of seeing that they don't do that. If they quit based on the idea that they are unwilling to do the job as it is defined, they don't solve the problem or in any other way remediate it except for themselves; the law will still be enforced, just by someone more compliant.
So I don't think we can really afford to put the issue aside unless conscription is involved.
At the present time, the administration has defended torture, "extraordinary rendition" (AKA "kidnapping"), and started a war of aggression on a sovereign country by attempting to kill the leader with the first bombs dropped — which is simply assassination with a side order of collateral damage. So I think the odds favor medals awarded and certificates of thanks issued, rather than investigations, trials, and punishments.
Well, a few things actually do come to mind. Internment camps for citizens of Japanese descent. Compulsory sterilization of those deemed genetically inferior. McCarthy's campaign against "reds" and everything that went along with it. Exposing citizens and soldiers to things like LSD and radiation without their informed consent while knowing the effects were guaranteed to be pernicious.
By no means does remediating these behaviors serve to absolve the government; they have jumped right into new ones that are just as, if not more so, evil and short-sighted as those. The massive trend towards permanent vilification and permanent down-classing of people who are convicted of crimes; the pursuit of large scale military acts of outright aggression, previously unknown in US history (I'm speaking of the current war in Iraq primarily); the continuing conversion of citizen liberties into penalized behaviors based upon statistically unlikely and constitutionally unsound excuses; and speaking of the constitution, the continuing trend to ignore the intent of that document, I think, says more about the failures of today's government than does any other single issue. Though you can trace some of the problems I mentioned earlier in the paragraph directly to that trend.
Perhaps we should be thinking that we don't need agencies like this at all. Perhaps we should get our government back to defending our borders, rather than interfering with other countries. Perhaps the very idea of the CIA is inherently flawed. Perhaps we could then further improve our situation by getting rid of a number of our other three-letter political tumors, such as the FCC, PTO, NSA, and ATF.
Perhaps our government should be spending its resources to build and/or enhance communications and other data/materials transport infrastructures so as to multiply the ability of the citizens to pursue productive lives. Maybe spend some time pruning out unconstitutional legislation, such as ex post facto laws, the inversion of the commerce clause, suppression of free speech, as well as an entire raft of "we know what is best for you" infringements upon personal liberty ranging from sexuality and drugs on the one hand to building codes and seat belts on the other.
Perhaps it should also get out of the business of subsidizing selected religions by (a) serving as a determining means as to what is, and what isn't, a religion and (b) providing religious institutions with monetary benefits such as tax exemptions which (c) cause the rest of the tax base to have to support the portion of the load that the religious institution would otherwise have to bear, and (d) continuing to allow corrosive religious expression in political venues (I'm speaking here of acts like prayer in congress, "blessings" from the president, mentions of "god" on money, etc.) acts that are surely as divisive and abusive of those who disagree with those religious expressions as is any other act of exclusion by category of belief(s).
Not that any of this could happen in the current social and political context, of course. Sad to say.
A noble sentiment. However, I doubt it has much value as a means to console (for example) the victims killed in our war upon, and subsequent occupation of, Iraq. Or those held without access to legal representation. Or those who have been tortured.
The fact is, our political system is far too unresponsive to the will of the people, and while it may indeed, as you infer, be self-correcting over the long term, this does not seem to be sufficient because we don't live for the long term, we live for now. For some people, particularly victims of nationalist aggression like those in Iraq, now is all they'll ever have.
That is entirely aside from the domestic mess this president, vice president, and their political allies in the system have enhanced, created, and defended.
One thing to keep in mind is that such information is the core of a company's ability to deliver a product; if they share it, then other companies can use that information without having to put out for the research, thus providing a competitive advantage.
I would think that, having done the research and (hopefully) produced a product, these people would prefer that any competitors start with the same disadvantages they had. That provides a buffer in time for profiting from their work. It's just basic economics.
My company makes interesting products as well; on the web site, we talk about the results you can achieve, the things you can do — nowhere do we explain to you how we get these things done. Commercial efforts often have this characteristic in common.
Even that is a misconception. "Pointy haired bosses" have accountability; in the end, they must make a profit as a consequence of their choices or the company will fold, because in a commercial enterprise, funds result from sales of a product and/or service, and said sale is at the option of the consumer.
The government suffers no loss of income, regardless of how poorly they perform. In fact, they often increase their income if they determine that performance is lacking. In the US, that income is taken by coercion (the threat of force, not to mention the occasional use of force) from the populace as income taxes, except of course for those who think that paying income taxes for services not in the general population's best interests is a good thing.
For instance, paying for an adequate national defense is easily argued to be in the populace's best interests; paying for an expeditionary force that attacks oil-rich countries is not. Paying the salaries of congress-people who make constitutional laws is easily argued to be in the populace's best interests; paying for ex-post facto law, law that abolishes habeas corpus, law that attempts to limit personal, consensual choices and liberties... these are the fruits of a coercive government out of control — argument for them is nonsensical.
The model for coercive tax-based government is defective with regard to ensuring performance at any level other than the elected personages. Even there, the political parties have created an assembly line of essentially similar candidates. These preserve the status quo of service to big money interests, with the people's interests placed dead last.
So while you may be entirely justified with regard to your derisive characterization of commercial command structure, just remember that such people do respond to a built-in and ultimately terminal feedback mechanism that the people have control of. This is not the case for government, or at least, the US government, which is the one I am most familiar with.
Disclosure: I am both a teacher and a "pointy headed boss" of a series of successful commercial enterprises.
So according to your reasoning, it would be a bad move to plan on the number of transistors per unit area increasing in the future, right? Because that's not a stationary target either, and in precisely the same way.
When I see an industry has a steady record of improvements in a particular area, when I know they're working on further improvements, when they make it clear they expect to have the those same improvements in hand... I'm willing to do a little hand-waving and say, as I did above, that in a few years or a decade, we'll almost certainly see them come about.
In the case of ultracaps, I've even put my money where my mouth is and invested in the companies I think have good chances to bring these specific improvements to market. That's indicative of my level of confidence in both the technology and the people working to bring battery replacement about.
In electronics in general, that's not wisdom, that's blindness. Ultracaps have been increasing in capacity steadily, with leaps here and there as new technologies show up, such as the use of nano-materials. Ten years ago, large 15 volt capacitors were in microfarads. Five years ago, I got to drop a one farad cap into my car audio system. Today, one glance at the net finds 30 farad caps; here's a 58-farad, 15 volt cap that represents a considerable improvement over past years. There's plenty of progress and research going on here, and there is no reason to assume that it is anywhere near the potential limits. 3000 farad units are available now at lower (2.7v) voltages already; it's just a matter of time before the voltages come up further and the farad values increase further.
This isn't revolution. It is evolution. Slow and steady. The slow makes it frustrating; the steady makes it all but inevitable.
You're not missing anything. 100% electric vehicles are where we're going, and it isn't batteries that are going to get us there, either. Hydrogen is way too hard to transport, store, and generate; ethanol requires the same wasteful tanker from here to there that gasoline does, plus puts an additional load on the food supply. Oil itself is far too useful to put in cars as fuel in any form for any longer than we absolutely have to.
A few years, maybe a decade, and ultracaps will simply crush all competing technologies. The distribution network is already there, local storage becomes practical at the same time as storage in the vehicle does, the efficiency gains of producing energy in large quantities is unbeatable, and for that matter, the gains from nuclear production of energy put all other polluting generation methods to shame. And of course, the non-polluting methods - hydro, solar, tidal, geothermal, wind, coupled with neat tricks like pumped storage... make electric a done deal. And of course, if you're a performance freak, there's no more pollution-free, controllable and easily delivered means to put horsepower to the ground than four electric motors. 1000 HP in a car? No technical reason why not. Other than you smearing yourself all over the landscape, that is. And with all that power available, you can still cruise at 30 HP on the freeway. ;-)
I agree. Although I'm not nearly as concerned with this as I am with the "indecency" regulation; censorship isn't a good idea under any circumstances, it is distressing to see it creep further into the realm of acceptability. It is also distressing to see how little commentary has been made here with regard to it, at least thus far. I don't want a small group of people regulating what everyone else can see. If people don't like something, they can turn it off, change the channel, or simply stop watching entirely. There's no reason the rest of us have to wear blinders and earplugs.
I write these filters for a living. Please don't try to tell me how they work.
Yes, there is. The historical correlation is that CO2 rises after the earth warms. This does not in any way support today's claims. Today's claims are based upon CO2 causing warming, not the historical "warming causes a rise in CO2."
If you want to sound authoritative, get your facts right. The GW model is not based upon historical CO2 events. It is based upon theories of a new sequence of events entirely.
Now, repeat after me: Historically speaking, CO2 rising events lag warming events, such rises have not led warming events. If this CO2 rise, certainly human caused (also different from the past), is leading a rise as the GW theories claim, this is a claim for a new sequence of events, not historically known to have happened.