And it still doesn't explain why they would need such ridiculous beacons.
You are assuming the beacons are only saying "This is a good landing spot". Maybe they are saying "someone has made contact with a civilization here, and recomend them for xxx." the Incas where a different group who wanted more data. since they were latter they also put in some more detail (which is why their pryimid differs).
Remember there are several ideas for the ship, but unless the law of relativity doesn't work as we think it does they are not going at light speed and so their journy took thousands of years at least. (Indeed you could say that the inca expididtion started before the egypt expididiont was close to earth, because they weren't sure the earlier one would make it - in this case redundancy is good. Also due to the lenght of time in space they probably had to have the nship full of their own food. By recruiting local labor they saved the need to bring cranes.
The last point is important: by recruiting local labor they could fill the sapce a crane would take with more food, or maybe something to keep them enertained. In this case the beacons say by their existance that locals are controllable enough to build these. No pryimid with locals suggests that either they are uncontrollable or the locals tried to kill them. Better to mark out a potential civilization before they have the technology to kill you, to figgure out if you need to build a defense system around their solar system before they advance or not. In this case pryimids would be a means to see what they can do, and serve no purpose.
I've put forth several suggestions above. Some are contradictory, until/unless we accually make contact with the civilization that kept records of what they did we will not know.
Institutional investors account for some 75%+ of the total traffic.
Where do you think those institutional investers get their money to invest? Baby boomers (amoung others like me) give them money to invest. Now I don't claim to know what will happen when they are all withdrawing funds not adding to them. However institutions still come down to money.
BTW, information I've recived from a source I can't recall (but I think it was goverment) suggests most americans were net sellers of stock during the run up, it was foreign investers doing the run up.
The artical says it has a one year mission. I wonder how long it will last. History of satalites suggests either a 20 years (Pinoner or voyger anyone?), or a couple weeks. Barring liftoff disasters of course. Of course being in earth orbit does intorduce some drag, but even still many things have been in space longer then their designed mission.
Blocking software in general is vastly oversold. If censorware salespeople sold motor scooters, mining companies would be buying them, having been faithfully assured that a 50cc Vespa can carry 200 tons of iron ore up a 30 degree grade.With enough gears and reinforcment I can make that 50cc vespa tow your 30 tons of ore up that 30 degree grade. What, you want me to make the 60 foot trip before the end of the 26th centruary? Quit changing the requirements on me.
Sigh, and then people wonder why enginneering projects are late. I'll find a solution to the problem you present, and you decide on a few new requirements that I can't meet.
You missed one important point: the people racing into Oklahoma discovered that most of the good land was already taken by those who snuck in (illegally) before the legal opening.
this is accually a good thing. You see we don't really understand genes yet. We have obtained vague understandings of some, but it will be years before we really understand them. The patent will expire in 17 (20?) years.
By the time we understand and can do anything we the gene with patented number 18953894 (made up, I don't know if it is a valid number) the patent will have expireed and nobody will be able to use this patent to get money from medical treatment!
For years we have had flex time, with a expetation that we work regular hours. Doesn't matter what hours so long as everyone knows when to look for you. That is I work 7-3:30, nobody expects to find me after 4. the guy next to me works 10:30-??? I don't know as I'm never in late enough to see him leave.
Reciently management has been trying to change that. My boss told me flat out one day that he sees no reason to come to the office more then one day a week. He also started nagging me to get DSL or cable, and when he found out those were not avaiable told me to expense out ISDN (which is much more expensive then cable to DSL despite being slower, but and least ISDN is avaiable - though the line has a different area code from my regular phone line)
At the last update my boss's boss's boss told everyone that thing will change. Having the france office do some work is just a dry run, soon we will not pay re-location expenses when hiring someone out of state, we will pay for their home office. We are expected to figgure out how to work with people in different time zone. Part of that is for all of us to work from home at least one day a week.
The point of all this: compition for emploiess is moving into town. Previously there were not many places for a high tech person to work (Minneapolis - CDC and Cray were the big names. Cray has been in trouble for a few years, and CDC isn't the same company that built the Cyber), now Sun is opening a office, and several other companies have already, with the only goal to attrack tech workers. Any company that doesn't compete well for workers will soon find that they have none. (Of course a recession/depression could change that) Flexably schedualing is just one factoring in compeeting for employees, but it is becoming an expected one. So the company can learn to compete now, or they will find that other companys not from their area will be hiring their emploiees. Their choice, my boss is hiring.
BTW, the cynics will point out that by allowing me to work from home I don't get paid to take an extra day off when snow prevents me from getting to work. Previously we got paid without taking vacation for a blizzard.
I worked on one project in years past that made a firewall. There was one intended customer: a goverment site that I can't admit to knowing the name of that intended to buy a few thousand and seperately attach every comptuer. Top seceret military doesn't trust their co-workers, and doesn't want to take the chance that one compromised comptuer on the internal network can compromise anouther.
I'm sure there is more then one layer of security in the above scheme, I know the above details but I strongly suspect they have a strict policy that no one person is trusted to know or be able to find out all the details of their security.
You forgot a step: the booth prints out a sheet listing your choices, which you then slip into a slot on a fireproof safe (THe slot nullifies teh fireproof, but all well). That way if lightning strikes or the hard drive crashes there is a backup.
Please don't give me a recipt. It sounds like a good idea, but in fact it is bad. With a recipt someone who really wants to win just comes by that night and shoots anyone who didn't vote for him. Don't have your recipt and you get shot for good measure.
Fraud hasn't been common in the US elections for a while. (Other shady practices, but in the end you cannot prove the homeless the democrats gave ciggeretts voted for Gore. Likewise if the republicans did something like this that I've not heard of)
Once I can find out who you voted for I can force your vote. If the election is public there will at least be more eveidence of who is cheating the system, making better odds that person is caught.
At least in the US anyone viewing porn at work can expect to be fired. Maybe they get one warning, but that would be it. Sexual harrassment laws pretty much require a company to block it. Besides, the internet connection at work is for buisness use, not personal. I could make an arguement that/. is buisness (Hey, I'm in technology and it is a technology site. I'd probably lose, but it could be made, I can see an arguement for porn at work.
While it is true that buisness would be lost from the few that are looking at porn where they shouldn't be, but I think most porn providors would go for this. Any movie director can slap a X rating on his own film, and most porn directors do this automaticly to get the buisness of people looking for a porn film. to these directors it is better to be rated X, then to be rated R (NC-17? I'm not up on these ratings) with terribal reviews. People going to movies rated less then X generally care a little about a quality film, while some folks going to rated X movies only care about sex. (In general of course)
It is fairly easy to write (get) a script that sends you to a random.xxx website. Again, this is good for all porn operators.
You have to do your own research. I had verizon, and hated it, but not for any obvious reason. They worked okay, except I lived on the edge of a digital/analog zone. My phone always went to the weak digital tower in the next town, and then didn't receive calls due to the weak signal. When in analog mode it would recive calls from the strong signal.
If you travel the nation, then no raoming is the way to go, but if you rarely travel the lack of minutes on those plans could be a problem. With voicestream I get 600 minutes, a similear priced national plan would give me about 300. (good luck finding that plan though, prices are always different between providers to make it harder to compare!) If you rarely travel, then it might be worth while to pay high roaming fees and hold your calls down when in those areas. My current phone covers 5 states (yeah, slivers into 3 of them), but most of my friends have the same plan, and we have discovered that while we travel right to the edge of the area regularly we rarely cross the line. (It just happens our favorite camping spot has service only on one side of camp, but that is good enough)
Every provider has a different plan, different in every way they can make it. They don't want to saying "X gives me 500 minutes for $35, while you chrage $40" They want you confused, maybe the $40 plan above has voice mail, and a better covereage area so it is worth it. Verizon and Att both have local, regional and national plans, with different pricing in each. Sprint has national only (but a poor coiverage area IMHO). Many local providors exist with local and regional plans. You might find an out state providor who gives you a better deal, and is local in your city even though your phone says roaming! (But you have to decide if giving your friends a long distance number to your cell phone is good or bad)
don't foget other featues. CallerID seems to be the norm with cell phones (in area!), but voice mail isn't even though it should be, at $10/month you might decide on a different plan anyway. Will you use wireless web? some people might, I'`ve never tried it. I have an option to get news clippings to my phone, I never tried it, but that might be important to you.
Bottom line: plans are intentionally confusing. Talk to people where you often travel to find out about local problems (and how long, since towers are upgraded everywhere but not all at once). Decide if you are going to travel enough that a national or regonal plan makes sense. (Too bad there are currently no international plans) Figgure out how much you use the phone, remembering to factor in the increased convience of having it. Only after doing the above should you look at plans.
Everyone seems to think metric is automaticly better for everything. In fact metric is often worse except for one point: everyone else does it. Americans don't always follow what everyone else does (despite how it seems sometimes).
Imperial is better for fractions. Most imperial systems were designed to support common fractions. 1/3rd a foot is marked on every imperial measuring device. A foot also happens to be a useful measure on a desktop. Of course something about that size would work too, but a foot is what we have. A decimeter is a bit small, but would work, and a meter is too big. (I wonder how many metric people know what a decimeter is without thinking...) Within a desktop area a third of your measure is a common thing to need. A quarter of a foot is useful, and the foot/inch system supports both rather well. Thirds are difficult in metric.
Converting between units is often described as an advantage, but in reality mistakes are made with both systems. If you order a large airplane (ie 200+ passangers) with metric units they build it, but every meaursement is milimeters, from the tollorances (which is.00xx mm) to the overall length (which varies depending on the tempature, but is something like 33000mm). Finially you rarely need to convert units. If I'm dealing with miles (or km) I don't normally need to know more then 1/4th a mile (1/2 km), anything more detailed isn't going to have an effect. (There are exceptions, but for most people and uses you don't need many significant digets.)
Speaking of tolorances most machinsts I know report that the thousandth of an inch happens to be a good tolorance, any metric measurement is either a not enough or more then needed for practical applications. I'm sure this is luck, but it is still a point.
A neighbor of mine was a single guy who owned his own house, has a nice boat, nice car, and over a million dollars (if he sold his investments) He had a stroke at 39, and will spend the rest of his life in a nursing home unable to enjoy any of that money. Well, unless you call paying a nurse to help you to the bathroom enjoying. Personally I respect my fellow humans too much to want someone else wiping my rear end.
Point is, if you live a healthy life to 75 or more, retiring at 38 is great and worth the years of working too long of hours. If your health disappears what good is all that money.
Of those I graduated from high school with, several didn't live to their 5 year class reunion due to accidents. (I'm not even counting drugs or suicide which account for a couple more) Accidents happen, and there is nothing you can do about them.
therefore, I'm enjoying my life now. If I live to be 123 and am healthy all the time, great, but if not I've enjoyed what I had. Mind you, I am puttting a large sum of money into retirment funds so I can retire early, but I'm not working more then 50 hour weeks (and that much rarely) so I can enjoy what my health while I have it.
I know all comptuers programing languages. Every single one. I know perl 7.0, the next successer to c (not C++ or c#, but the one that will come next) I know all dialects of LISP.
Church wrote a therom proving it. All turing compatable languages are equivelent, and non turing compatable lanugages are very limited.
Ask me on an interview if I know smalltalk and I'll respond "Yes, but I'll need a week of review before you can quiz me on my knowlege." Then after the interview I head to the local book strore and buy some small talk books, or head to the net and look up smalltalk. No big deal, I've learned programing languages before, and will learn more in the future. Learning the first language is hard, but once you know a Lisp, a Procedural language, and a machine language (assembly counts), you know all the variations, and it is just a matter of syntax which is easy.
Of course mastering a progrmaing language takes time, but to learn it is easy. One of my professors claimed to have learned basic in a morning, and I have no problem beliving him. Trivial to do, if I didn't know basic I could learn it in a few hours too. I could also spend several years learning the tricks to make basic work best, but to make it work good enough is a trivial task.
It was fine for Rosa Parks to write letters about injustace too, but it wasn't fine for her to break the system and sit in the front of the bus. Fortunatly we have police to arrest people like her who go byond writting letters.
It would have been fine for the early union workers to talk and write letters after work, but it wasn't fine for them to strike. Fortunatly we have a national gaurd to stop strikes.
Standard practice for the system is to try to change those forcing change instead of changing. I won't comment on if the whole homecoming system should be changed (or scraped), but if he wants to fight, then he had to go byond writting letters. I've seen school newspapers, web sites and the like. They don't do anything, but make people feel good. They are needed to a point, but there is also a time to stand up and let actions speak louder then the pen.
They say the pen is more powerful then the sword. They are only right when someone is willing to pick up a sword and force people to think about what the pen just wrote.
I can't be the only one who is going to vote for someone not listed. While normally I agree that you can't cover all options, they could have at least had an option "Someone else". Sure those like me amount to only a small amount, but you can't count on use as either Nader or Browne voters if we vote.
OTOH, you are rihgt, everyone's vote counts, if they use it. My canidate won't win, but his goal never was to win, it always was to send a message to his former party that they are not representing him, and the more who vote for him the stronger that message is.
Chrismas is a pagan celibration of [The shortest day of the year]. It has, and never has had anything to do with Jesus, other then a few hipacrats in various churches who were unwilling to give up their old beliefs after admiting christianity is the right religion.
To this day many perpetuate the myth that Jesus was born in december (we don't know when, but december is very unlikey), in order to continue their old celebration under a new name. A rose by any other name smells as sweet. You could die the fur of a skunk, but it would still be a skunk. Christians do not celebrate christmas, pseudo christians celebrate christmas.
I know it says Bush or Gore, but it figgures answering third party's would be ignored.
1: This is a issue for the individual states. The constituion does not allow the federal goverment to get involved. We belive the states should legislate against the use of deadly drugs, but that is their buisness. However all enforcement must be in a mannor respecting the limits placed by the constitution, in particular the fourth ammendment.
In addition consider the following quote from http://www.constitut ion party.org/lets_take_back_america.htm[On Colombia] This war is not about fighting drugs. It is not about
defeating the narco-terrorists or the Communist influences from Cuba
and from China in Colombia. This is another New World Order adventure
in which American lives will be lost for no good purpose unless we can provide leadership in cutting off the money for this unconstitutional
activity.
2: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." That said I'm a Christian, and so I don't recignise other religions as valid. However, as president, my country doesn't recignise any religion. So long as your religion isn't horrid (that is human sacrafice is out) the US should stay out of your way. So as long as you can freely practice your rediogigion (which means not participating in mine) you should have no cause for complaint.
I belive that tax breaks for religions (churches) simply are a way to bribe ministers [to not mention anything the goverment is doing wrong], and when looked at that way, it is clearly something the first ammendment was trying to prevent.
To turn this around, is your minority religion oppressed because there are many who belive you are wrong, or are you oppressed because laws are preventing you from practicing. If the former, I will not prevent one person from having free speach so you can have your religion, but if the latter I will work to repeal the oppressive laws.
3: Anytime you do major changes to the tax code there will be changes are people adjust to them. However my platform is more then a massive tax cut, it is also a spending cut. So we are allowing you to spend more money, but because the goverment is spending less, there will overall be LESS money in the system. This money will come from unconstituional programs, of which there are many. Of course many people will be hurt in the short run, but in the long run we will be better off, and can adjust if they have to.
4: As a third party I don't like the current system, but there are worse things the goverment does. However since we are touching election reform let me ask why tax payer dollars are going to political partys. My party has pledged to never take any goverment money to run our campaign (even if the current rules didn't discriminate against us)
5: [Congress shall have power] "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for
limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their
respective writings and discoveries;"
I belive in the constitution, and will enforce keep patents and copyrights for a limited time as required. It is however unclear to me how to call the current duration of copyrights as limited. Otherwise, while there are specifics of everything that is wrong, the reforms needed are minor.
6: "Amendment IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated,..." That looks like encrption to me. I am secure at home against unreasonable searches and seizures in part becuase I use a lock. My comptuer papers are secure (or not) because I use (or don't) encryption.
This does not cover reasonable searches. If there is probable cause (and other requirments met), then things change, a court may order you to give up your keys if they cannot break the lock.
As for exporting strong encryption, the constitution does not allow anyone to prevent exports.
7: The following was taken from an essay by Howard Phillips, and ways it better then I can (url in answer to question one):
"We favor, and given the chance, will secure the immediate withdraw of
our country from the United Nations.
"The other day I received a questionnaire from the League of Women
Voters of Nevada, and they said we have a nuclear waste problem in
America and a lot of the nuclear waste is targeted for certain
locations in the state of Nevada. Do you agree that the nuclear waste
should go to Nevada? I was asked. And I said, absolutely not. We
should place that nuclear waste in Turtle Bay, New York under the
United Nations Building.
8: Congress (Not the president) is charged with protecting the nation from invasion. While the framers of the constitution could not envision a day when we could defend ourselves from asteroids or other threats from space, today we can envison it, and in the future can achive it. Congress has power to maintain a navy, and I expect one day the navy will provide defense against space based attacks.
"we favor defending Americas borders,
we support a strong national defense"
That said, today while we can envision technolody to do this defense we cannot achive it now. However we should consider threats from space in defense plans. Our missile defense plan should eventially extend to cover them. Today however we cannot reasonably defend ourselves against those attacks.
9: History makes it easy to see these times. Some were obvious while we were in them, others not. Manifest destiny didn't cover all the 19th century, and much of the population didn't move west as new territory opened up.
I suspect that history will give the answer, if anyone has a time machine to go forwards and check. However we can move to a mission of freedom, and limited goverment, and that is what a vote for me represents.
Votes are cast in seceret. I know who I'm voteing for (Howard Phillups, though I might go to browne at that last minute)
Lets assume for the sake of discussion I'm voting for Bush. I can still sign up as a nader supporer, and promise to vote for Gore in my state (which is contested). Then I go to the polls, seceretly vote for Bush, yet tell everyone I voted for Gore. Nobody knows that I got two votes for bush in, one in my state, and one as a vote for nader giving a possibility that Bush could win anouther state that previously he had no chance in.
even if you plead guilty, he might be able to get you a lesser sentance.
Agread. I spent an afternoon watching court once (everyone should do this once in a while to check up on the legal system as an outsider!) I saw a guy who plead gulty to some minor offense and was given 7 days in jail. His lawyer was able to get the 7 days as follows: enter the jail directly after work friday night, stay all day saterday and sunday, leave money morning and go to work. That is 4 days. The judge was starting to schedual the next 3 days, but the lawyer pointed out two days were already spent when he was arrested (one night in jail). Then then judge said "No sense in one day, I'll call that a suspended sentance, if you don't get in trouble for a year you won't have to searve it. See what why you had a lawyer."
Obviously for more serious charges things will be different, but still a lawyer will do a lot for you. Get one.
Your lucky, you are legally obliged to stop (at least most states have good sameratian laws). However the law for normal people has little teath.
When I joined the emergency response team at work (Good way to learn CPR and first aid, which everyone should know) I was told that because I'm on the team it is a fellony for me to drive by an accident scene without helping. However the law is written so that I only have to be there helping until the pros show up. In other words I have to stop and do first aid but if there are any police there I don't have to.
Even still, you should make it a point to stop and help every time you are the first to a scene like that. Who cars that you are late to your plane, or whatever, a life is more valuable then anything else you could do.
(just like if the police have a warrent to look in your closet for a body but find a box with drugs, I belive that they they can't do anything without getting another warrent to specifically search for drugs.
Right, but the reverse is allowed. That is if they have a warrent to search your closet for drugs, and find a dead body they can take that. The reason is someone searching for drugs would reasonabbly be expected to see a dead body while searching that closet for drugs. If Their warrent is for a body and they find a walk in closet full of drugs (Severall million dollars worth I'd imangine) they could count that because the sear quanity in that place means they have to search the drugs for the body. But if they are searching the closet for a body and find one joint it would probably be thrown out. (If the joint was on the coffee table in the living room though, and obviously illegal they could take that because a reasonable person would find it while looking for a body.
There are other situations, but the point is that if someone would reasonabbly find it while searching for something else they can take it. Cracking tools can hide on a kiddie porn CD, but they would have to convince a court that a reasonable person searching for a cracking program would look at a.jpg to verify it was a picture as opposed to trying to run them as a program.
To which country? I haven't studied every country on the planet, but from what I can tell, they all have a goverment that does something I don't like.
People like to think of islands and such, but it turns out every island is claimed by a goverment that has a police force to enforce whatever laws. (Except antartica I suppose, but you can't survive there without interacting with other goverments) SeaLand might qualify, but they still have a goverment, and people being what they are I doupt that everyone on SeaLand will agree with you.
Slashdot Mirror
And it still doesn't explain why they would need such ridiculous beacons.
You are assuming the beacons are only saying "This is a good landing spot". Maybe they are saying "someone has made contact with a civilization here, and recomend them for xxx." the Incas where a different group who wanted more data. since they were latter they also put in some more detail (which is why their pryimid differs).
Remember there are several ideas for the ship, but unless the law of relativity doesn't work as we think it does they are not going at light speed and so their journy took thousands of years at least. (Indeed you could say that the inca expididtion started before the egypt expididiont was close to earth, because they weren't sure the earlier one would make it - in this case redundancy is good. Also due to the lenght of time in space they probably had to have the nship full of their own food. By recruiting local labor they saved the need to bring cranes.
The last point is important: by recruiting local labor they could fill the sapce a crane would take with more food, or maybe something to keep them enertained. In this case the beacons say by their existance that locals are controllable enough to build these. No pryimid with locals suggests that either they are uncontrollable or the locals tried to kill them. Better to mark out a potential civilization before they have the technology to kill you, to figgure out if you need to build a defense system around their solar system before they advance or not. In this case pryimids would be a means to see what they can do, and serve no purpose.
I've put forth several suggestions above. Some are contradictory, until/unless we accually make contact with the civilization that kept records of what they did we will not know.
Institutional investors account for some 75%+ of the total traffic.
Where do you think those institutional investers get their money to invest? Baby boomers (amoung others like me) give them money to invest. Now I don't claim to know what will happen when they are all withdrawing funds not adding to them. However institutions still come down to money.
BTW, information I've recived from a source I can't recall (but I think it was goverment) suggests most americans were net sellers of stock during the run up, it was foreign investers doing the run up.
The artical says it has a one year mission. I wonder how long it will last. History of satalites suggests either a 20 years (Pinoner or voyger anyone?), or a couple weeks. Barring liftoff disasters of course. Of course being in earth orbit does intorduce some drag, but even still many things have been in space longer then their designed mission.
You missed one important point: the people racing into Oklahoma discovered that most of the good land was already taken by those who snuck in (illegally) before the legal opening.
this is accually a good thing. You see we don't really understand genes yet. We have obtained vague understandings of some, but it will be years before we really understand them. The patent will expire in 17 (20?) years.
By the time we understand and can do anything we the gene with patented number 18953894 (made up, I don't know if it is a valid number) the patent will have expireed and nobody will be able to use this patent to get money from medical treatment!
For years we have had flex time, with a expetation that we work regular hours. Doesn't matter what hours so long as everyone knows when to look for you. That is I work 7-3:30, nobody expects to find me after 4. the guy next to me works 10:30-??? I don't know as I'm never in late enough to see him leave.
Reciently management has been trying to change that. My boss told me flat out one day that he sees no reason to come to the office more then one day a week. He also started nagging me to get DSL or cable, and when he found out those were not avaiable told me to expense out ISDN (which is much more expensive then cable to DSL despite being slower, but and least ISDN is avaiable - though the line has a different area code from my regular phone line)
At the last update my boss's boss's boss told everyone that thing will change. Having the france office do some work is just a dry run, soon we will not pay re-location expenses when hiring someone out of state, we will pay for their home office. We are expected to figgure out how to work with people in different time zone. Part of that is for all of us to work from home at least one day a week.
The point of all this: compition for emploiess is moving into town. Previously there were not many places for a high tech person to work (Minneapolis - CDC and Cray were the big names. Cray has been in trouble for a few years, and CDC isn't the same company that built the Cyber), now Sun is opening a office, and several other companies have already, with the only goal to attrack tech workers. Any company that doesn't compete well for workers will soon find that they have none. (Of course a recession/depression could change that) Flexably schedualing is just one factoring in compeeting for employees, but it is becoming an expected one. So the company can learn to compete now, or they will find that other companys not from their area will be hiring their emploiees. Their choice, my boss is hiring.
BTW, the cynics will point out that by allowing me to work from home I don't get paid to take an extra day off when snow prevents me from getting to work. Previously we got paid without taking vacation for a blizzard.
I worked on one project in years past that made a firewall. There was one intended customer: a goverment site that I can't admit to knowing the name of that intended to buy a few thousand and seperately attach every comptuer. Top seceret military doesn't trust their co-workers, and doesn't want to take the chance that one compromised comptuer on the internal network can compromise anouther.
I'm sure there is more then one layer of security in the above scheme, I know the above details but I strongly suspect they have a strict policy that no one person is trusted to know or be able to find out all the details of their security.
You forgot a step: the booth prints out a sheet listing your choices, which you then slip into a slot on a fireproof safe (THe slot nullifies teh fireproof, but all well). That way if lightning strikes or the hard drive crashes there is a backup.
Please don't give me a recipt. It sounds like a good idea, but in fact it is bad. With a recipt someone who really wants to win just comes by that night and shoots anyone who didn't vote for him. Don't have your recipt and you get shot for good measure.
Fraud hasn't been common in the US elections for a while. (Other shady practices, but in the end you cannot prove the homeless the democrats gave ciggeretts voted for Gore. Likewise if the republicans did something like this that I've not heard of)
Once I can find out who you voted for I can force your vote. If the election is public there will at least be more eveidence of who is cheating the system, making better odds that person is caught.
At least in the US anyone viewing porn at work can expect to be fired. Maybe they get one warning, but that would be it. Sexual harrassment laws pretty much require a company to block it. Besides, the internet connection at work is for buisness use, not personal. I could make an arguement that /. is buisness (Hey, I'm in technology and it is a technology site. I'd probably lose, but it could be made, I can see an arguement for porn at work.
While it is true that buisness would be lost from the few that are looking at porn where they shouldn't be, but I think most porn providors would go for this. Any movie director can slap a X rating on his own film, and most porn directors do this automaticly to get the buisness of people looking for a porn film. to these directors it is better to be rated X, then to be rated R (NC-17? I'm not up on these ratings) with terribal reviews. People going to movies rated less then X generally care a little about a quality film, while some folks going to rated X movies only care about sex. (In general of course)
It is fairly easy to write (get) a script that sends you to a random .xxx website. Again, this is good for all porn operators.
You have to do your own research. I had verizon, and hated it, but not for any obvious reason. They worked okay, except I lived on the edge of a digital/analog zone. My phone always went to the weak digital tower in the next town, and then didn't receive calls due to the weak signal. When in analog mode it would recive calls from the strong signal.
If you travel the nation, then no raoming is the way to go, but if you rarely travel the lack of minutes on those plans could be a problem. With voicestream I get 600 minutes, a similear priced national plan would give me about 300. (good luck finding that plan though, prices are always different between providers to make it harder to compare!) If you rarely travel, then it might be worth while to pay high roaming fees and hold your calls down when in those areas. My current phone covers 5 states (yeah, slivers into 3 of them), but most of my friends have the same plan, and we have discovered that while we travel right to the edge of the area regularly we rarely cross the line. (It just happens our favorite camping spot has service only on one side of camp, but that is good enough)
Every provider has a different plan, different in every way they can make it. They don't want to saying "X gives me 500 minutes for $35, while you chrage $40" They want you confused, maybe the $40 plan above has voice mail, and a better covereage area so it is worth it. Verizon and Att both have local, regional and national plans, with different pricing in each. Sprint has national only (but a poor coiverage area IMHO). Many local providors exist with local and regional plans. You might find an out state providor who gives you a better deal, and is local in your city even though your phone says roaming! (But you have to decide if giving your friends a long distance number to your cell phone is good or bad)
don't foget other featues. CallerID seems to be the norm with cell phones (in area!), but voice mail isn't even though it should be, at $10/month you might decide on a different plan anyway. Will you use wireless web? some people might, I'`ve never tried it. I have an option to get news clippings to my phone, I never tried it, but that might be important to you.
Bottom line: plans are intentionally confusing. Talk to people where you often travel to find out about local problems (and how long, since towers are upgraded everywhere but not all at once). Decide if you are going to travel enough that a national or regonal plan makes sense. (Too bad there are currently no international plans) Figgure out how much you use the phone, remembering to factor in the increased convience of having it. Only after doing the above should you look at plans.
Everyone seems to think metric is automaticly better for everything. In fact metric is often worse except for one point: everyone else does it. Americans don't always follow what everyone else does (despite how it seems sometimes).
Imperial is better for fractions. Most imperial systems were designed to support common fractions. 1/3rd a foot is marked on every imperial measuring device. A foot also happens to be a useful measure on a desktop. Of course something about that size would work too, but a foot is what we have. A decimeter is a bit small, but would work, and a meter is too big. (I wonder how many metric people know what a decimeter is without thinking...) Within a desktop area a third of your measure is a common thing to need. A quarter of a foot is useful, and the foot/inch system supports both rather well. Thirds are difficult in metric.
Converting between units is often described as an advantage, but in reality mistakes are made with both systems. If you order a large airplane (ie 200+ passangers) with metric units they build it, but every meaursement is milimeters, from the tollorances (which is .00xx mm) to the overall length (which varies depending on the tempature, but is something like 33000mm). Finially you rarely need to convert units. If I'm dealing with miles (or km) I don't normally need to know more then 1/4th a mile (1/2 km), anything more detailed isn't going to have an effect. (There are exceptions, but for most people and uses you don't need many significant digets.)
Speaking of tolorances most machinsts I know report that the thousandth of an inch happens to be a good tolorance, any metric measurement is either a not enough or more then needed for practical applications. I'm sure this is luck, but it is still a point.
A neighbor of mine was a single guy who owned his own house, has a nice boat, nice car, and over a million dollars (if he sold his investments) He had a stroke at 39, and will spend the rest of his life in a nursing home unable to enjoy any of that money. Well, unless you call paying a nurse to help you to the bathroom enjoying. Personally I respect my fellow humans too much to want someone else wiping my rear end.
Point is, if you live a healthy life to 75 or more, retiring at 38 is great and worth the years of working too long of hours. If your health disappears what good is all that money.
Of those I graduated from high school with, several didn't live to their 5 year class reunion due to accidents. (I'm not even counting drugs or suicide which account for a couple more) Accidents happen, and there is nothing you can do about them.
therefore, I'm enjoying my life now. If I live to be 123 and am healthy all the time, great, but if not I've enjoyed what I had. Mind you, I am puttting a large sum of money into retirment funds so I can retire early, but I'm not working more then 50 hour weeks (and that much rarely) so I can enjoy what my health while I have it.
I know all comptuers programing languages. Every single one. I know perl 7.0, the next successer to c (not C++ or c#, but the one that will come next) I know all dialects of LISP.
Church wrote a therom proving it. All turing compatable languages are equivelent, and non turing compatable lanugages are very limited.
Ask me on an interview if I know smalltalk and I'll respond "Yes, but I'll need a week of review before you can quiz me on my knowlege." Then after the interview I head to the local book strore and buy some small talk books, or head to the net and look up smalltalk. No big deal, I've learned programing languages before, and will learn more in the future. Learning the first language is hard, but once you know a Lisp, a Procedural language, and a machine language (assembly counts), you know all the variations, and it is just a matter of syntax which is easy.
Of course mastering a progrmaing language takes time, but to learn it is easy. One of my professors claimed to have learned basic in a morning, and I have no problem beliving him. Trivial to do, if I didn't know basic I could learn it in a few hours too. I could also spend several years learning the tricks to make basic work best, but to make it work good enough is a trivial task.
It was fine for Rosa Parks to write letters about injustace too, but it wasn't fine for her to break the system and sit in the front of the bus. Fortunatly we have police to arrest people like her who go byond writting letters.
It would have been fine for the early union workers to talk and write letters after work, but it wasn't fine for them to strike. Fortunatly we have a national gaurd to stop strikes.
Standard practice for the system is to try to change those forcing change instead of changing. I won't comment on if the whole homecoming system should be changed (or scraped), but if he wants to fight, then he had to go byond writting letters. I've seen school newspapers, web sites and the like. They don't do anything, but make people feel good. They are needed to a point, but there is also a time to stand up and let actions speak louder then the pen.
They say the pen is more powerful then the sword. They are only right when someone is willing to pick up a sword and force people to think about what the pen just wrote.
I can't be the only one who is going to vote for someone not listed. While normally I agree that you can't cover all options, they could have at least had an option "Someone else". Sure those like me amount to only a small amount, but you can't count on use as either Nader or Browne voters if we vote.
OTOH, you are rihgt, everyone's vote counts, if they use it. My canidate won't win, but his goal never was to win, it always was to send a message to his former party that they are not representing him, and the more who vote for him the stronger that message is.
Chrismas is a pagan celibration of [The shortest day of the year]. It has, and never has had anything to do with Jesus, other then a few hipacrats in various churches who were unwilling to give up their old beliefs after admiting christianity is the right religion.
To this day many perpetuate the myth that Jesus was born in december (we don't know when, but december is very unlikey), in order to continue their old celebration under a new name. A rose by any other name smells as sweet. You could die the fur of a skunk, but it would still be a skunk. Christians do not celebrate christmas, pseudo christians celebrate christmas.
I know it says Bush or Gore, but it figgures answering third party's would be ignored.
1: This is a issue for the individual states. The constituion does not allow the federal goverment to get involved. We belive the states should legislate against the use of deadly drugs, but that is their buisness. However all enforcement must be in a mannor respecting the limits placed by the constitution, in particular the fourth ammendment.
In addition consider the following quote from http://www.constitut ion party.org/lets_take_back_america.htm[On Colombia] This war is not about fighting drugs. It is not about defeating the narco-terrorists or the Communist influences from Cuba and from China in Colombia. This is another New World Order adventure in which American lives will be lost for no good purpose unless we can provide leadership in cutting off the money for this unconstitutional activity.
2: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." That said I'm a Christian, and so I don't recignise other religions as valid. However, as president, my country doesn't recignise any religion. So long as your religion isn't horrid (that is human sacrafice is out) the US should stay out of your way. So as long as you can freely practice your rediogigion (which means not participating in mine) you should have no cause for complaint.
I belive that tax breaks for religions (churches) simply are a way to bribe ministers [to not mention anything the goverment is doing wrong], and when looked at that way, it is clearly something the first ammendment was trying to prevent.
To turn this around, is your minority religion oppressed because there are many who belive you are wrong, or are you oppressed because laws are preventing you from practicing. If the former, I will not prevent one person from having free speach so you can have your religion, but if the latter I will work to repeal the oppressive laws.
3: Anytime you do major changes to the tax code there will be changes are people adjust to them. However my platform is more then a massive tax cut, it is also a spending cut. So we are allowing you to spend more money, but because the goverment is spending less, there will overall be LESS money in the system. This money will come from unconstituional programs, of which there are many. Of course many people will be hurt in the short run, but in the long run we will be better off, and can adjust if they have to.
4: As a third party I don't like the current system, but there are worse things the goverment does. However since we are touching election reform let me ask why tax payer dollars are going to political partys. My party has pledged to never take any goverment money to run our campaign (even if the current rules didn't discriminate against us)
5: [Congress shall have power] "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
I belive in the constitution, and will enforce keep patents and copyrights for a limited time as required. It is however unclear to me how to call the current duration of copyrights as limited. Otherwise, while there are specifics of everything that is wrong, the reforms needed are minor.
6: "Amendment IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, ..." That looks like encrption to me. I am secure at home against unreasonable searches and seizures in part becuase I use a lock. My comptuer papers are secure (or not) because I use (or don't) encryption.
This does not cover reasonable searches. If there is probable cause (and other requirments met), then things change, a court may order you to give up your keys if they cannot break the lock.
As for exporting strong encryption, the constitution does not allow anyone to prevent exports.
7: The following was taken from an essay by Howard Phillips, and ways it better then I can (url in answer to question one):
"We favor, and given the chance, will secure the immediate withdraw of our country from the United Nations.
"The other day I received a questionnaire from the League of Women Voters of Nevada, and they said we have a nuclear waste problem in America and a lot of the nuclear waste is targeted for certain locations in the state of Nevada. Do you agree that the nuclear waste should go to Nevada? I was asked. And I said, absolutely not. We should place that nuclear waste in Turtle Bay, New York under the United Nations Building.
8: Congress (Not the president) is charged with protecting the nation from invasion. While the framers of the constitution could not envision a day when we could defend ourselves from asteroids or other threats from space, today we can envison it, and in the future can achive it. Congress has power to maintain a navy, and I expect one day the navy will provide defense against space based attacks.
That said, today while we can envision technolody to do this defense we cannot achive it now. However we should consider threats from space in defense plans. Our missile defense plan should eventially extend to cover them. Today however we cannot reasonably defend ourselves against those attacks.
9: History makes it easy to see these times. Some were obvious while we were in them, others not. Manifest destiny didn't cover all the 19th century, and much of the population didn't move west as new territory opened up.
I suspect that history will give the answer, if anyone has a time machine to go forwards and check. However we can move to a mission of freedom, and limited goverment, and that is what a vote for me represents.
Votes are cast in seceret. I know who I'm voteing for (Howard Phillups, though I might go to browne at that last minute)
Lets assume for the sake of discussion I'm voting for Bush. I can still sign up as a nader supporer, and promise to vote for Gore in my state (which is contested). Then I go to the polls, seceretly vote for Bush, yet tell everyone I voted for Gore. Nobody knows that I got two votes for bush in, one in my state, and one as a vote for nader giving a possibility that Bush could win anouther state that previously he had no chance in.
when I first read the story I thought it was anouther wacko perdicting Jesus is coming.
Fortunatly I realized in time so that I'm not the one doing the obligatory "This is not news for nerds" post.
even if you plead guilty, he might be able to get you a lesser sentance.
Agread. I spent an afternoon watching court once (everyone should do this once in a while to check up on the legal system as an outsider!) I saw a guy who plead gulty to some minor offense and was given 7 days in jail. His lawyer was able to get the 7 days as follows: enter the jail directly after work friday night, stay all day saterday and sunday, leave money morning and go to work. That is 4 days. The judge was starting to schedual the next 3 days, but the lawyer pointed out two days were already spent when he was arrested (one night in jail). Then then judge said "No sense in one day, I'll call that a suspended sentance, if you don't get in trouble for a year you won't have to searve it. See what why you had a lawyer."
Obviously for more serious charges things will be different, but still a lawyer will do a lot for you. Get one.
Your lucky, you are legally obliged to stop (at least most states have good sameratian laws). However the law for normal people has little teath.
When I joined the emergency response team at work (Good way to learn CPR and first aid, which everyone should know) I was told that because I'm on the team it is a fellony for me to drive by an accident scene without helping. However the law is written so that I only have to be there helping until the pros show up. In other words I have to stop and do first aid but if there are any police there I don't have to.
Even still, you should make it a point to stop and help every time you are the first to a scene like that. Who cars that you are late to your plane, or whatever, a life is more valuable then anything else you could do.
(just like if the police have a warrent to look in your closet for a body but find a box with drugs, I belive that they they can't do anything without getting another warrent to specifically search for drugs.
Right, but the reverse is allowed. That is if they have a warrent to search your closet for drugs, and find a dead body they can take that. The reason is someone searching for drugs would reasonabbly be expected to see a dead body while searching that closet for drugs. If Their warrent is for a body and they find a walk in closet full of drugs (Severall million dollars worth I'd imangine) they could count that because the sear quanity in that place means they have to search the drugs for the body. But if they are searching the closet for a body and find one joint it would probably be thrown out. (If the joint was on the coffee table in the living room though, and obviously illegal they could take that because a reasonable person would find it while looking for a body.
There are other situations, but the point is that if someone would reasonabbly find it while searching for something else they can take it. Cracking tools can hide on a kiddie porn CD, but they would have to convince a court that a reasonable person searching for a cracking program would look at a .jpg to verify it was a picture as opposed to trying to run them as a program.
To which country? I haven't studied every country on the planet, but from what I can tell, they all have a goverment that does something I don't like.
People like to think of islands and such, but it turns out every island is claimed by a goverment that has a police force to enforce whatever laws. (Except antartica I suppose, but you can't survive there without interacting with other goverments) SeaLand might qualify, but they still have a goverment, and people being what they are I doupt that everyone on SeaLand will agree with you.