I realize that this is Slashdot, &tc... but please read the full opinion. As it makes clear, the Supreme Court (in an 8-0 decision, with the Chief recused) agrees that this aspect of the patent system is broken. As it also makes clear, the responsibility for fixing the broken patent system lies entirely with Congress.
This opinion is a good example of the Supreme Court essentially telling Congress to get its act together and fix the broken patent system. In the meantime, the Court reiterates what the problem is with the patent system in this case, and provides a solution for Congress to implement. But the Court is not empowered to fix the broken statute by itself, so it has to essentially settle for restating what the current broken statute says, and enforcing the law that's on the books.
Since the broken statute is not unconstitutional - Congress was empowered by the Constitution to act, and it did, poorly - the Court can only point out the flaw and hope the Congress fixes it.
Lawyers in 2004 made a median of $94,930. The median programmer, by way of comparison, made $62,890. For net/sysadmins, the median is $58,190. The lowest median salary by specialty for doctors was $137,119. Surgeons made over $250,000, on the median. Computing and information systems managers made a median of $92,570.
"and that private watchdogs and the free press are probably why the US has not had a Chernobyl."
I'm banking on superior US engineering and DOE oversight, but if you sleep better at night because self-important private watchdogs and even more self-important journalists are keeping close tabs on the nuclear industry, more power to you.
It seems that Hazzlebank has missed a key point of the earlier post. His racist slurs don't help his point, but I'll put aside Adam's anti-Arab racism for the moment and focus instead on the technical and political merits of his and the earlier discussion.
I think what the previous poster was attempting to say was something along the lines of, "We built this house. It is open to change. Please feel free to rewrite BIND to fit your particular society's needs and also feel free to peacefully and democratically convince the rest of the world to make the (huge, difficult) adjustments needed in order to accommodate your particular needs. Please note that given the inherent limitations imposed by the immense deployed base of software that depends on DNS, it may take a while, so be patient."
I highly encourage those from non-English-speaking societies (and their allies within said societies) to adjust DNS (and everything that depends on it) to account for the particular writing systems that have arisen out of non-English-speaking societies. It seems that ICANN is considering imposing this change upon the 'net by fiat, however. Such an imposition would be abhorrent.
One source of the pressure was Adama Samassekou, president of the African Academy of Languages in Mali, who said that the Anglo-centric internet left people isolated and marginalised.
"I think the digital divide is not as important as the linguistic divide. And that's the one we should be bridging in order to guarantee the democratic governance of the internet," said Samassekou.
Democratic governance of the internet? By whom? Is there some sort of requirement that, like Mali, countries involved in the governance of the internet themselves be democracies? Is there a press freedom requirement for countries involved in the governance? Is there a court to resolve disputes? Will this "Internet Government" pay for the writing of DNS and routing software that can handle all of the requirements imposed upon it by a legislative body?
[satire] Further, why should we stop at DNS? Won't the code be written in obviously discriminatory languages that utilize poorly-obscured ENGLISH for their function names? Why must a Chinese programmer use "printf" when she should be able to choose to use something written in her own language? Clearly "print" was put into programming languages to keep down the non-English-speaking people in the world. [/satire]
Your data on SUV sales is utterly incorrect. The data (with links):
Ford SUV sales lead to loss: "7/21/2006 - Ford Motor Co. reported an unexpected quarterly loss Thursday as sales of sport-utility vehicles plunged amid rising gasoline prices. The loss threatened Chief Executive Officer William Clay Ford Jr.'s plan to revive the No. 2 U.S. automaker."
Chrysler has slower truck and SUV sales: "9/18/2006 - DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group said at the weekend it could lose about $US1.27 billion this year, a much deeper loss than it forecast in July because of mounting inventory and slower truck and SUV sales."
German premium car makers hit by slump in SUV sales: "9/13/2006 - Germany's premium car makers are feeling the pinch as consumers in the United States, the world's biggest car market, are turning their backs on fuel-guzzling SUVs."
Chrysler slashes production of trucks, SUVs: "9/19/2006 - In the meantime, the company plans to significantly scale back on truck and SUV output due to a decline in sales of such vehicles. Trucks and SUVs, which historically represent about three-quarters of Chrysler's volume and return generous profits, have been under pressure in the U.S. due to high gasoline prices, [DaimlerChrysler CEO Dieter] Zetsche said."
Europe bans GM crops as an excuse to provide cover for their program of protecting and subsidizing their local farmers against competition from superior American farmers. Everything else is just a rationalization for this destructive economic practice.
I'm heading to law school shortly, and instead of buying the "recommended" Dell will be purchasing the MacBook Pro. Why buy a 2500 dollar Dell that only runs Windows and Linux when I can spend the same amount and get OS X, Windows, Linux, BSD, etc...? Plus, that glowing Apple from my monitor will make me instantly visible in class.;-)
Of course, their IT department won't support it, but if I need to set foot in there for anything other than setting my password the first time I will consider it a major personal failing.;-)
Yeah, I'm going to call bullshit on that one. I see cyclists on 2222 all the time but 360 is a different story entirely. And the weather's beautiful - sometimes a little hot, but beautiful all the same.
The parent (ironically titled "Shill!") is repeating a talking point being spread about by the eco-nuts themselves, thus shilling for the enviro-nuts. The WaPo printed this as the disclosure on the end of the article, clearly showing Moore's industry ties: "Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, is chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. He and Christine Todd Whitman are co-chairs of a new industry-funded initiative, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which supports increased use of nuclear energy." (emphasis mine).
This is full disclosure from the WaPo, people. The Kos Kidz are split on this issue, but the anti-nuke kidz seem to be rallying around hearsay whilst the pro-nuke kidz seem to be rallying around, dare I say it, science.
The anti-nuke folks, to their shame, are on the same side of science as the anti-evolution folks.
An update - that cost savings calculator doesn't appear to take into account the cost of the bulb. The Vitalites don't pay for themselves.
This leads me to believe that more energy is expended in making the Vitalite than is saved during the course of its use, defeating the entire purpose of using CFL.
Since ugly is not an option, I'll stick with my incandescent lights.
You make a fluorescent bulb that isn't ugly and depressing, I'll replace my incandescents.
No one ever talks about the aesthetics of lighting a home. They are important. It is important to light your home beautifully. Most people recognize this instinctively and use the incandescent. Fluorescent lights are ugly, ugly, ugly. If you're saying we should all live in some sort of dystopian nightmare of completely artificial light, please say it clearly.
The Colour Rendering Index (CRI) of a lamp reflects how accurately the colour of an object can be determined under a given light source. Compact fluorescent lamps have a CRI of 82 (out of 100), which is considered excellent for fluorescent sources and good for artificial light in general. Incandescent lamps have a CRI of 97. Incandescent lamps provide excellent colour rendering because of the full spectrum of colour wavelengths present in the light they produce.
Naturallighting.com offers fluorescent and CFL lamps with a CRI of 91, which is better, but still not the 97 you get out of a regular incandescent bulb. Vita-lites cost seventeen dollars, compared with 4-7 bucks for a GE CFL, and under a dollar for the regular old incandescent. GE's CFL offerings (the type normally available in stores) are the soul-destroying 82 CRI variety and are thus unacceptable.
The CFL savings calc shows that even using the Vita-lites, you'd save money over the course of a year. I'm going to order one of those Vita-lites to see if it passes the aesthetic test.
Well, yeah. In that case, you just make a phone call to the Washington Post, tell them your national security secrets, and they publish your work secrets for all the world to see. If you want a copy of them printed out for you, you just walk out of work with nothing at all, and then purchase the paper from the magazine stand at the Metro. Easy as pie.
Look at the Honda Fit, being introduced for this model year. There's a Toyota offering as well. These cars were not previously sold in the US because the lack of demand precluded their sale.
Oh come now. You go on in this "we're demolishing our beautiful forests" vein - here's a MODIS image of your region of the country from 2002 - the deep green is forest. Get a sense of perspective, man.
I've heard this type of rant before, and I'm suprised that you're claiming that people are "fleeing from the cities". I mean, people who are enviros are usually in the same boat as the social-justice libs who rail against how all of the yuppies are moving back into the cities and gentrifying them. Can you guys on the left get your facts straight?
Would you rather that the (probably overblown) concern of gentrification and people moving back into the cities in droves be the actual case, or that people move out of the cities into exurbs, "destroying the environment"?
I mean, there's a solution to the dual problems "fleeing from the cities" and "moving back into the cities", and I suppose that's why VHEMT exists, but y'all should at least be up front about it.
I have realized over the last few years that Slashdot has actually become the place where you can find "News for Liberal Nerds. Stuff that matters to Liberals." This, however, is way, way over the top.
The idea of universal access is not new. It has been accomplished to provide telephone service to those in remote communities where it makes no financial sense for a company to provide service. As more and more services (especially government services) are delivered over the internet, the gap between rich and poor grows larger. Things that used to be done in person can now be done remotely, requiring less time wastage and thus less money wastage. Ensuring that everyone has access to such services is something I believe a liberal would support. A dyed-in-the-wool libertarian certainly wouldn't. It is unbelievable to me that liberals would be against such an idea.
Oh come now. John Glenn was a Democrat his whole political life. He served in the Senate as a Democrat from 1975-1999, and ran for President unsuccessfully as a Democrat in 1984.
His testimony is widely interpreted as bashing George Bush, especially by fellow Bush bashers. His subject position is hardly that of an apolitical former astronaut. It is rather that of a long-time politico who has a large interest in seeing his party win in the next election. By exploiting his position as a former astronaut in order to denigrate the President's plan, he can achieve success in his goal of supporting a party he has been an official in, and important part of since 1975.
As such, I hardly take his testimony as impartial. It is anything but.
You're right, it's not left-wing/right-wing. It's "does it matter that we're spewing CO2 into the atmosphere, or not?"
You seem to be taking the subject position that the question of whether or not it matters has already been answered. You also seem to be taking the subject position that there are things to be done that wouldn't bankrupt society.
I'm not sure you can take those positions without making a huge amount of assumptions that probably aren't provable.
Note that taking the "whether or not it matters question has already been answered" subject position is shaky either way you believe the question to have been answered. Can you really PROVE that melting the ice caps and increasing the temperature of the planet by 0.n degrees over the next 10 years is going to matter? Can you prove it won't?
Here's the biggest question: in an economic analysis of the effects of the Kyoto Treaty (and similar "environmental" efforts), why does the U.S. get raped economically, while no other countries do (certainly not to the degree the U.S. does)? Is this politically motivated by envious nations wishing to bring the U.S. down to their level? Is Kyoto really about the environment, or about hurting the U.S.? Does it matter if the U.S. is hurt? Why, or why not?
Moreso, in fact. Check out how wonderfully polluted the Soviet Bloc countries were compared to the US and Western Europe. Neither was unpolluted, but the Soviet Bloc ones were just loads and loads worse. It was amazing when the Berlin Wall came down, so I've heard. East Germany was just... dirty.
So true. China's per capita 'try somebody for a crime that isn't really a crime, don't allow them to defend themselves, then execute them and bill their relatives for the bullet' rate is higher than everywhere else in the world, period. Moreover, their 'wipe entire villages (including their populations) off the map for political reasons' rate must be at least nearing that of the USSR. And finally, let's not forget their 'institute a Cultural Revolution and kill everyone who doesn't agree with us, or looks at us funny, or who we think looks funny, or who's related to them' rate, which really competed with Stalin, Pol Pot, and Hitler for the top prize of being the biggest atrocity of the 20th century.
But if you're one of those simpletons who can't see beyond their own time and their own borders, then comparing the great AMERICAN state of Texas to China with regards to human rights might actually seem sensical. If you were an idiot, I mean. It's too bad this country seems to be filled with the sort of simple, non-logically-thinking, irrational, US-centric, self-righteous voter that would make such asinine comparisons. And to think - they're otherwise fairly intelligent. Check out the Slashdot community, for instance. It's filled with such politically naive and unnuanced people who really are otherwise intelligent.
I always like to ask people if they know what the worst nuclear power disaster in United States history was. The answer is "Three Mile Island" - if they know it at all.
The fun part comes in asking them how many people died as a result of the "accident" - they give numbers ranging from 100 - 10,000. The real answer is "zero". Amusing.
Point a: aggressive pursuit of alternative forms of energy. I seem to remember the usual suspects (i.e., people like you) saying "yes" to wind power and "no" to it in their back yard. I seem to remember Bush being either criticized for supporting hydrogen fuel cells, or criticized for not supporting them enough. Nothing is ever good enough for the alternative fuel people. "Alternative fuel" is simply a canard that small-minded religio-Environmentalists bring up to change the subject or distract from the topic at hand.
Point b: trees. American farmers clear-cut their crops, also, before replanting them. There are more trees in the US today than there were 100 years ago. Look it up. As American forestry industries move into South America, those regions of forest will hopefully come under the management of companies which have a vested interest in growing as many trees as possible. Just as only a dumb, poor farmer ruins his soil (and goes out of business), the companies who are succeeding in forestry (IP, Weyerhaueser, Boise, Rayonier, to name a few) succeed because they, like a successful farmer, knows how to treat the land, knows how to plant forests, and knows the proper ways of managing them through the life-cycle of growth until they're ready to be harvested. It is the policies of well-meaning (but ignorant) Environmentalists which have caused the damage to old-growth forests in America, by insisting on putting out every small forest fire and thus leading to major blazes which take down the whole forest. Ultimately, talking about forestry in such an ignorant way reveals you for the religious devotee of the dogma of Environmentalism that you are.
Global warming is the same. A policy crafted by well-meaning but ignorant Environmentalists who seem to have no problem with telling people how to run their businesses and their lives, while simultaneously being in line with the people who would rail against the government if it tried to do the same (unless, of course, they were the ones running the government). Ironic that they'd happily enact legislation preventing me from driving my car economically, or legislation which would force jobs out of the US, etc.. - most of the people pushing these enviro-regulations don't need jobs anyway, because they're academics. Check out Michael Crichton's speeches on the matter or Bjorn Lomberg's book (which had many attacks, all of which have failed or been retracted), about environmentalism, written from a skeptic's standpoint and using actual hard science to examine some of the claims made by the newest religion, Environmentalism.
He specifically mentions scientific purposes - I'm sure he had orthophotos, other aerial photography, and satellite images in mind when he mentioned "scientific purposes".
This, on the other hand, was for photographic purposes.
He sure would have saved himself some work had he just gotten his hands on a copy of ERDAS, though. And that compressed JPG would look a hell of a lot better as a MrSID image. But I digress.
I still think it's clever. Maybe not groundbreaking or earthshattering, but clever, and neat.
Slashdot Mirror
I realize that this is Slashdot, &tc... but please read the full opinion. As it makes clear, the Supreme Court (in an 8-0 decision, with the Chief recused) agrees that this aspect of the patent system is broken. As it also makes clear, the responsibility for fixing the broken patent system lies entirely with Congress.
This opinion is a good example of the Supreme Court essentially telling Congress to get its act together and fix the broken patent system. In the meantime, the Court reiterates what the problem is with the patent system in this case, and provides a solution for Congress to implement. But the Court is not empowered to fix the broken statute by itself, so it has to essentially settle for restating what the current broken statute says, and enforcing the law that's on the books.
Since the broken statute is not unconstitutional - Congress was empowered by the Constitution to act, and it did, poorly - the Court can only point out the flaw and hope the Congress fixes it.
Lawyers in 2004 made a median of $94,930. The median programmer, by way of comparison, made $62,890. For net/sysadmins, the median is $58,190. The lowest median salary by specialty for doctors was $137,119. Surgeons made over $250,000, on the median. Computing and information systems managers made a median of $92,570.
"and that private watchdogs and the free press are probably why the US has not had a Chernobyl."
I'm banking on superior US engineering and DOE oversight, but if you sleep better at night because self-important private watchdogs and even more self-important journalists are keeping close tabs on the nuclear industry, more power to you.
I think what the previous poster was attempting to say was something along the lines of, "We built this house. It is open to change. Please feel free to rewrite BIND to fit your particular society's needs and also feel free to peacefully and democratically convince the rest of the world to make the (huge, difficult) adjustments needed in order to accommodate your particular needs. Please note that given the inherent limitations imposed by the immense deployed base of software that depends on DNS, it may take a while, so be patient."
I highly encourage those from non-English-speaking societies (and their allies within said societies) to adjust DNS (and everything that depends on it) to account for the particular writing systems that have arisen out of non-English-speaking societies. It seems that ICANN is considering imposing this change upon the 'net by fiat, however. Such an imposition would be abhorrent.
Democratic governance of the internet? By whom? Is there some sort of requirement that, like Mali, countries involved in the governance of the internet themselves be democracies? Is there a press freedom requirement for countries involved in the governance? Is there a court to resolve disputes? Will this "Internet Government" pay for the writing of DNS and routing software that can handle all of the requirements imposed upon it by a legislative body?
[satire]
Further, why should we stop at DNS? Won't the code be written in obviously discriminatory languages that utilize poorly-obscured ENGLISH for their function names? Why must a Chinese programmer use "printf" when she should be able to choose to use something written in her own language? Clearly "print" was put into programming languages to keep down the non-English-speaking people in the world.
[/satire]
Your data on SUV sales is utterly incorrect. The data (with links):
Ford SUV sales lead to loss: "7/21/2006 - Ford Motor Co. reported an unexpected quarterly loss Thursday as sales of sport-utility vehicles plunged amid rising gasoline prices. The loss threatened Chief Executive Officer William Clay Ford Jr.'s plan to revive the No. 2 U.S. automaker."
Chrysler has slower truck and SUV sales: "9/18/2006 - DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group said at the weekend it could lose about $US1.27 billion this year, a much deeper loss than it forecast in July because of mounting inventory and slower truck and SUV sales."
German premium car makers hit by slump in SUV sales: "9/13/2006 - Germany's premium car makers are feeling the pinch as consumers in the United States, the world's biggest car market, are turning their backs on fuel-guzzling SUVs."
Chrysler slashes production of trucks, SUVs: "9/19/2006 - In the meantime, the company plans to significantly scale back on truck and SUV output due to a decline in sales of such vehicles. Trucks and SUVs, which historically represent about three-quarters of Chrysler's volume and return generous profits, have been under pressure in the U.S. due to high gasoline prices, [DaimlerChrysler CEO Dieter] Zetsche said."
Europe bans GM crops as an excuse to provide cover for their program of protecting and subsidizing their local farmers against competition from superior American farmers. Everything else is just a rationalization for this destructive economic practice.
I'm heading to law school shortly, and instead of buying the "recommended" Dell will be purchasing the MacBook Pro. Why buy a 2500 dollar Dell that only runs Windows and Linux when I can spend the same amount and get OS X, Windows, Linux, BSD, etc...? Plus, that glowing Apple from my monitor will make me instantly visible in class. ;-)
;-)
Of course, their IT department won't support it, but if I need to set foot in there for anything other than setting my password the first time I will consider it a major personal failing.
Yeah, I'm going to call bullshit on that one. I see cyclists on 2222 all the time but 360 is a different story entirely. And the weather's beautiful - sometimes a little hot, but beautiful all the same.
The parent (ironically titled "Shill!") is repeating a talking point being spread about by the eco-nuts themselves, thus shilling for the enviro-nuts. The WaPo printed this as the disclosure on the end of the article, clearly showing Moore's industry ties: "Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, is chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. He and Christine Todd Whitman are co-chairs of a new industry-funded initiative, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which supports increased use of nuclear energy." (emphasis mine).
This is full disclosure from the WaPo, people. The Kos Kidz are split on this issue, but the anti-nuke kidz seem to be rallying around hearsay whilst the pro-nuke kidz seem to be rallying around, dare I say it, science.
The anti-nuke folks, to their shame, are on the same side of science as the anti-evolution folks.
I'm intrigued by the "I don't believe in good and evil" juxtaposed with "I am a Christian". Do go on.
An update - that cost savings calculator doesn't appear to take into account the cost of the bulb. The Vitalites don't pay for themselves.
This leads me to believe that more energy is expended in making the Vitalite than is saved during the course of its use, defeating the entire purpose of using CFL.
Since ugly is not an option, I'll stick with my incandescent lights.
No one ever talks about the aesthetics of lighting a home. They are important. It is important to light your home beautifully. Most people recognize this instinctively and use the incandescent. Fluorescent lights are ugly, ugly, ugly. If you're saying we should all live in some sort of dystopian nightmare of completely artificial light, please say it clearly.
The Canadian Research Council says this about CFL:
Naturallighting.com offers fluorescent and CFL lamps with a CRI of 91, which is better, but still not the 97 you get out of a regular incandescent bulb. Vita-lites cost seventeen dollars, compared with 4-7 bucks for a GE CFL, and under a dollar for the regular old incandescent. GE's CFL offerings (the type normally available in stores) are the soul-destroying 82 CRI variety and are thus unacceptable.
The CFL savings calc shows that even using the Vita-lites, you'd save money over the course of a year. I'm going to order one of those Vita-lites to see if it passes the aesthetic test.
"unless they're like the CIA/NSA or something"
Well, yeah. In that case, you just make a phone call to the Washington Post, tell them your national security secrets, and they publish your work secrets for all the world to see. If you want a copy of them printed out for you, you just walk out of work with nothing at all, and then purchase the paper from the magazine stand at the Metro. Easy as pie.
Look at the Honda Fit, being introduced for this model year. There's a Toyota offering as well. These cars were not previously sold in the US because the lack of demand precluded their sale.
Oh come now. You go on in this "we're demolishing our beautiful forests" vein - here's a MODIS image of your region of the country from 2002 - the deep green is forest. Get a sense of perspective, man.
I've heard this type of rant before, and I'm suprised that you're claiming that people are "fleeing from the cities". I mean, people who are enviros are usually in the same boat as the social-justice libs who rail against how all of the yuppies are moving back into the cities and gentrifying them. Can you guys on the left get your facts straight?
Would you rather that the (probably overblown) concern of gentrification and people moving back into the cities in droves be the actual case, or that people move out of the cities into exurbs, "destroying the environment"?
I mean, there's a solution to the dual problems "fleeing from the cities" and "moving back into the cities", and I suppose that's why VHEMT exists, but y'all should at least be up front about it.
I have realized over the last few years that Slashdot has actually become the place where you can find "News for Liberal Nerds. Stuff that matters to Liberals." This, however, is way, way over the top.
The idea of universal access is not new. It has been accomplished to provide telephone service to those in remote communities where it makes no financial sense for a company to provide service. As more and more services (especially government services) are delivered over the internet, the gap between rich and poor grows larger. Things that used to be done in person can now be done remotely, requiring less time wastage and thus less money wastage. Ensuring that everyone has access to such services is something I believe a liberal would support. A dyed-in-the-wool libertarian certainly wouldn't. It is unbelievable to me that liberals would be against such an idea.
Oh come now. John Glenn was a Democrat his whole political life. He served in the Senate as a Democrat from 1975-1999, and ran for President unsuccessfully as a Democrat in 1984.
His testimony is widely interpreted as bashing George Bush, especially by fellow Bush bashers. His subject position is hardly that of an apolitical former astronaut. It is rather that of a long-time politico who has a large interest in seeing his party win in the next election. By exploiting his position as a former astronaut in order to denigrate the President's plan, he can achieve success in his goal of supporting a party he has been an official in, and important part of since 1975.
As such, I hardly take his testimony as impartial. It is anything but.
You're right, it's not left-wing/right-wing. It's "does it matter that we're spewing CO2 into the atmosphere, or not?"
You seem to be taking the subject position that the question of whether or not it matters has already been answered. You also seem to be taking the subject position that there are things to be done that wouldn't bankrupt society.
I'm not sure you can take those positions without making a huge amount of assumptions that probably aren't provable.
Note that taking the "whether or not it matters question has already been answered" subject position is shaky either way you believe the question to have been answered. Can you really PROVE that melting the ice caps and increasing the temperature of the planet by 0.n degrees over the next 10 years is going to matter? Can you prove it won't?
Here's the biggest question: in an economic analysis of the effects of the Kyoto Treaty (and similar "environmental" efforts), why does the U.S. get raped economically, while no other countries do (certainly not to the degree the U.S. does)? Is this politically motivated by envious nations wishing to bring the U.S. down to their level? Is Kyoto really about the environment, or about hurting the U.S.? Does it matter if the U.S. is hurt? Why, or why not?
Those are some real questions.
Moreso, in fact. Check out how wonderfully polluted the Soviet Bloc countries were compared to the US and Western Europe. Neither was unpolluted, but the Soviet Bloc ones were just loads and loads worse. It was amazing when the Berlin Wall came down, so I've heard. East Germany was just... dirty.
So true. China's per capita 'try somebody for a crime that isn't really a crime, don't allow them to defend themselves, then execute them and bill their relatives for the bullet' rate is higher than everywhere else in the world, period. Moreover, their 'wipe entire villages (including their populations) off the map for political reasons' rate must be at least nearing that of the USSR. And finally, let's not forget their 'institute a Cultural Revolution and kill everyone who doesn't agree with us, or looks at us funny, or who we think looks funny, or who's related to them' rate, which really competed with Stalin, Pol Pot, and Hitler for the top prize of being the biggest atrocity of the 20th century.
But if you're one of those simpletons who can't see beyond their own time and their own borders, then comparing the great AMERICAN state of Texas to China with regards to human rights might actually seem sensical. If you were an idiot, I mean. It's too bad this country seems to be filled with the sort of simple, non-logically-thinking, irrational, US-centric, self-righteous voter that would make such asinine comparisons. And to think - they're otherwise fairly intelligent. Check out the Slashdot community, for instance. It's filled with such politically naive and unnuanced people who really are otherwise intelligent.
Along these lines...
I always like to ask people if they know what the worst nuclear power disaster in United States history was. The answer is "Three Mile Island" - if they know it at all.
The fun part comes in asking them how many people died as a result of the "accident" - they give numbers ranging from 100 - 10,000. The real answer is "zero". Amusing.
Point a: aggressive pursuit of alternative forms of energy. I seem to remember the usual suspects (i.e., people like you) saying "yes" to wind power and "no" to it in their back yard. I seem to remember Bush being either criticized for supporting hydrogen fuel cells, or criticized for not supporting them enough. Nothing is ever good enough for the alternative fuel people. "Alternative fuel" is simply a canard that small-minded religio-Environmentalists bring up to change the subject or distract from the topic at hand.
Point b: trees. American farmers clear-cut their crops, also, before replanting them. There are more trees in the US today than there were 100 years ago. Look it up. As American forestry industries move into South America, those regions of forest will hopefully come under the management of companies which have a vested interest in growing as many trees as possible. Just as only a dumb, poor farmer ruins his soil (and goes out of business), the companies who are succeeding in forestry (IP, Weyerhaueser, Boise, Rayonier, to name a few) succeed because they, like a successful farmer, knows how to treat the land, knows how to plant forests, and knows the proper ways of managing them through the life-cycle of growth until they're ready to be harvested. It is the policies of well-meaning (but ignorant) Environmentalists which have caused the damage to old-growth forests in America, by insisting on putting out every small forest fire and thus leading to major blazes which take down the whole forest. Ultimately, talking about forestry in such an ignorant way reveals you for the religious devotee of the dogma of Environmentalism that you are.
Global warming is the same. A policy crafted by well-meaning but ignorant Environmentalists who seem to have no problem with telling people how to run their businesses and their lives, while simultaneously being in line with the people who would rail against the government if it tried to do the same (unless, of course, they were the ones running the government). Ironic that they'd happily enact legislation preventing me from driving my car economically, or legislation which would force jobs out of the US, etc.. - most of the people pushing these enviro-regulations don't need jobs anyway, because they're academics. Check out Michael Crichton's speeches on the matter or Bjorn Lomberg's book (which had many attacks, all of which have failed or been retracted), about environmentalism, written from a skeptic's standpoint and using actual hard science to examine some of the claims made by the newest religion, Environmentalism.
He specifically mentions scientific purposes - I'm sure he had orthophotos, other aerial photography, and satellite images in mind when he mentioned "scientific purposes".
This, on the other hand, was for photographic purposes.
He sure would have saved himself some work had he just gotten his hands on a copy of ERDAS, though. And that compressed JPG would look a hell of a lot better as a MrSID image. But I digress.
I still think it's clever. Maybe not groundbreaking or earthshattering, but clever, and neat.
Wow, Slashdot's getting slow. ;-)
I particularly enjoy the shot of it falling over.
Seriously, though. Why would you use a Segway instead of, say, a four-wheel RC car?