Do you really believe sanctions would have any effect on countries that would do this?
Ignoring the obvious places, like China, how about if Chile was found to be doing this purely for economic gain? Do you really think the US could do much to Chile? How about Romania or Bulgaria? Would US sanctions mean much to them? I don't think so.
Also, no matter what the US did, many countries in Europe would ignore it. Just as we are seeing with Iran and previously with Iraq. If France can get money by selling weapons to Iran, they will do it regardless of what the US thinks of the deal. I seriously doubt the US has the clout at the international level to really make sanctions stick today.
So that pretty much means nothing would happen. China, North Korea and other places like Bulgaria know this. Sure, they aren't overtly attacking anyone today, but good luck tracing credit card fraud and not involving some of those places. Today, they just aren't interested in assisting law enforcement efforts against their people. It could certainly get worse.
Sorry, but the manufacturing trend was started in the 1980s and accelerated by NAFTA. Everyone was warned about the consequences, but the appeal of millions of wealthy Mexicans being able to buy American products was just too great. Except then we found out that the Mexicans weren't all that wealthy and were a lot more interested in buying cheap, locally grown food rather than buying stuff that we actually imported from China.
The problem today is that it is pretty much a one-way trip. Talk about creating tariffs on goods manufactured in low-wage countries will get you a healthy slap from WTO. Bush II tried that with steel and was rather firmly rebuffed. Sorry, in the name of globalization we have removed barriers that prevented manufacturers from seeking the lowest wages and now it is economically unfeasible to consider stopping.
About the only thing that would stop this now would be an open shooting war with China.
What people don't get is there is a huge difference between the US as a place with cheap, plentiful labor and the US as a place with high-cost labor. In the 1930s Hoover Dam was constructed - today it would be impossible because of both worker safety and labor cost. Similarly, any large scale construction project is never going to get off the ground - the people that would do this know that for each mile of bridge or tunnel X people are going to be killed. No matter how small X is, it doesn't matter - OSHA, insurance companies and the like are never going to allow X people to be killed. So no construction project of that kind of scale. The workers are too valuable.
Similarly, we aren't going to be bringing back manufacturing jobs. Nobody wants to buy a $100 broom. Especially not when the same broom costs $2.50 from China. And nobody wants to suggest that the workers making $27.50 an hour are paid too much. Between government regulations and the unions you aren't going to have an opportunity to bring back manufacturing to the US.
The devices that were fooled were old optical devices. These are a joke and shouldn't be used for anything, ever.
The "real" fingerprint reader uses RF to scan multiple layers of skin and detects a pulse in the finger. So a gummy bear finger will not work, and a "decapitated" finger will not work. Really, nothing works except a real, living finger.
Authentec makes these devices and they are one of the few companies making ones that work.
Any fingerprint system that does not require both human skin and a pulse is an inferior solution. Most palm print readers are only good when monitored by a guard to prevent the use of anything except a real palm.
However, fingerprint readers that do require both human skin and a pulse are available. Using an optical reader which allows simple fakes - like a "gummi finger" - is just plain silly. All of the "testing" that has been done showing how these devices are easily spoofed has all been done with optical readers, not the RF based ones.
There are no electrical connections on a liquid sensor - it is just a pad that changes color when it is exposed to water - or even high humidity. The purposes of this is to detect that a phone has been exposed to water, which will really screw it up. Thus, phones that have color-changed liquid sensors are not eligible for warranty replacement.
Do you believe the penalty for murder should be different if a hit man gets paid?
Compensation for most actions is irrelevent. You might not go to work if you didn't get paid, but just about everything else the compensation is irrelevent.
The problem is today that so many parents are more than happy to turn over teaching morality to someone else - anyone else that might be handy. This includes school, church, fellow students, random adults at the mall, anybody. Anyone that is willing to spend the time.
Of course, what this results in is a totally borked situation where you have people thinking that as long as they get away with it, anything is OK. And a good portion of the folks that in yesteryear might have helped the parents out either no longer exist or just aren't interested in anymore because of overload and mission creep.
So if you actually want to try to instill some sort of morality in your children, great. Except unless you accept the idea that you are in the minority you are going to be trying to get everyone out of "parent's territory". A lot of parents, and I'd say most of them today, aren't as interested as you are. So trying to get things changed so it is always only the parent's role is just going to leave us in a much worse situation than we are in now in 20 years.
It isn't great that schools try to get into this when they are generally incapable of doing a good job. However, in today's world what else is there? TV? Movie stars? Are there any role models that would be good for children to look up to? Is there anyone that has enough interaction with children today to actually be able to provide a role model and some kind of morality? The answer for the most part is that if the parents, grandparents and siblings aren't going to do any "parenting" then the only other actor in the child's life is school. Sucks, doesn't it?
This doesn't really excuse what is described here, but what we are faced with is some kind of "community parenting" and nobody knows who is doing what or what they should be doing exactly. So you see a lot of experiments. Some of these experiments involve people convincing teenagers to run away from home, become prostitutes and give their new guardian the money. Some get the children into strange cults in the name of "giving the children religion" which the adults seem to think is necessary and important. I'm sure there are other experiments which turn out to be good, worthwhile and constructive. Sadly, you don't see very many of those.
We're going to have to learn how to manage this because for the most part, the parents aren't going to do it. This is especially true when the parent is a 15 year old girl that saw the father once or twice and managed to get pregnant.
There will be no superconducting power lines built. Are you at all familiar with the huge numbers of people that believe that power lines cause cancer, impotence and a raft of other maladies?
First, you would have to convince people that the power lines aren't going to kill them or destroy their children's chances of being gifted. So far, that hasn't happened.
Then you would have to make sure the new power lines were pretty and that no small creatures were being harmed by the construction. Anytime there is construction that might cause small creatures discomfort or disturb their habitat there is a huge outcry from a couple of people. Years later, the lawsuit stopping construction is dismissed, but by that time nobody really cares anymore - the project was abandoned.
2. While labor costs aren't low, they are a heck of a lot lower than in the US.
3. Did I say no unions?
4. There are no tariffs on importing cars. That was resolved a long time ago. Now if we want to sell rice to Japan we find out that our open trading agreements do not apply to such crops which are vital to the national security of Japan. Therefore, the can be no imports of rice. Or just about anything else to Japan.
And if the people around naval bases had any input on the matter, there would be none of these.
About the only way a nuclear powerplant is getting built is if the government tells the environmentalists to sit down and shut up. Instead, we are going to have to move to a "conserve" mode whereby a small shortage in base load capacity is transformed into a major lack of capacity.
End result will likely be power just gets turned off. Rolling blackouts, but on a very predictable schedule. Or, every home has a box to turn off the air conditioner when commanded to do so. They have this in Florida already.
Residential photovoltaics are great, except there is this little problem with the cost. You can get all sorts of rebates and tax credits to offset the cost - only problem is the payoff is still about 10 years out.
How many people plan on living in the same house for 10 years today? History shows not many.
Current pricing is at least $25,000 for a house-size system unless you have a one-room shack without air conditioning. You can get about 50% of that back within a couple of years. The other 50% (at least $12,500) would be recouped at around $100 a month, if that. That's 10 years.
And that is pretty much how it works in Arizona. Chicago (where I used to live) would be a much longer payback, maybe 20 years.
Sure, they are going to plan to build a power plant. Sure.
This will get to the "environmental impact statement" level and some public comment. The company contracted to build it will discover it will take five years to get through the multiple environmental impact studies, neighborhood meetings and protests. They will forget about the project at that point.
Unless some comprehensive federal regulations were put in force, I don't see the US building a lot of new power plants any time soon. Are they needed? Sure, we are running out of base capacity. But are the average people convinced they need to have new power plants? No, they aren't. And they are perfectly willing to let environmental activists control the entire process, supposedly in their name.
If the current situation doesn't change, we are going to just have to cut back on electricity usage. So much for the idea of plug-in hybrid cars. Where, exactly are you going to plug them in? Certainly nowhere during the day.
Create a single-member LLC and get yourself an TIN. You may be able to do this with a partnership as well. In some places it is just cheaper to get a corporation. No matter what, you too can get a SSN-like tax id number that has no connection to your previous credit history.
I think Survivor and The Batchelor are cheaper to produce than American Idol.
I'd expect a lot more shows looking like that. Cheap, totally fake medical shows that are really just a gossipy nurses-chasing-doctors story are probably pretty cheap to produce as well.
This is the kind of show you will be seeing in the future as disposable incomes shrink and people just aren't spending as much. Therefore, ad budgets will shrink and production costs will have to be trimmed.
Most businesses these days want to minimize their risk. If there is any risk involved that you might do something irresponsible, they figure a credit report will tell them if you are responsible or not. This may not be 100% accurate, but seems to have a good correlation.
So, they need your SSN to pull a credit report. You can certainly refuse, and they will simply say that you aren't worth the unknown risk.
This has nothing to do with credit. Insurance agents cannot insure you without a credit report these days, because of the level of risk and the abuses that have occurred. Want to get a satellite dish? DirecTV wants a credit report because if you are a high risk they probably don't want to bother with you.
So sure, they don't need your SSN. But most businesses that ask for it these days aren't going to do anything for you if you aren't going to supply it. Lots don't ask, and they aren't looking to mitigate any kind of risk.
It is all about the risk, and evidently time has shown that lousy credit means you are a high risk for default, fraud and just being irreponsible.
All manufacturing involves damage to the environment, and if we weren't making batteries it'd be something else. We can work on making manufacturing less damaging, but it's not going away.
Not going away? In the US it mostly has, already. Oh sure, all we did was move to somewhere else where lower labor costs are. But the whole point of making do with less is less manufacturing, less consumption and less waste.
You'd be surprised how few manufactured products a Bandledeshi farmer uses in a year. Or even sees. So there are people living on the planet that are getting along fine without lots of manufactured stuff.
As Al Gore how much closer Americans should be getting to the lifestyle of a Bangledeshi farmer. Think about it - no more obesity, no more Type II Diabetes, no more smog. Maybe a lot more horse manure, but as the cities shrink that won't be much of a problem. And the cities will shrink because (a) no more immigration - who'd want to come here then? and (b) who wants to bring children into a world like that?
Every time you use a credit card there is a substantial risk that it will be "borrowed". Credit card numbers are worth money, while not a lot of money individually if you have a couple hundred from week's worth of "collecting" then you can sell them and get something - maybe $20-$50 or so. Maybe more. Keep doing this, week after week and this can make up for a crappy salary from a retail job.
What happens? Well, the card holder has to get a new card. The credit card company takes it out on the merchant that took the card, but they usually have insurance so no loss there. Basically, nobody loses unless you count the insurance company. And nobody likes insurance companies, now do they?
I get my cards "borrowed" and actually used at least once a year. After the first couple of times you realize that the option to sell them is extremely attractive to anyone that thinks they aren't getting paid enough. There is a certain amount of risk, but as credit card companies almost never prosecute (or more accurately, assist the police and file a complaint), the risk is really quite small.
You want to stop credit card fraud? There may not be a way. You can't make the credit card issuer liable because then there would be no penalty for the merchant and/or cardholder to assist with fraud. Going after the cardholder doesn't help - people would just stop using credit cards. It might help if the credit card companies actually went after the people committing the fraud, but not all that much.
Probably the most key item in that list (which is missing) is the depth at which the bomb is at. Anything over a few hundred feet is going to be difficult to find and until fairly recently almost impossible to recover. I remember a recovery operation involving the first Alvin submersible where they were able to snag a parachute to recover a warhead, which was the first such recovery in deep water.
Today I suppose it might be possible to recover something in 10,000 feet of water, but you would have to find it. Saying "they found the Titanic" doesn't count because it is a massive object on the floor of the ocean in a place where there literally is nothing else around. Finding a bomb in an area where the sea floor isn't flat would be a huge challenge. Probably beyond the limit of what anyone is willing to dog today and well into the future.
Not all 150,000 pieces of ordinace are mines - there are plenty of unexploded bombs and other stuff that goes BOOM as well. But probably only a small fraction of this is in the way of the pipeline.
Now, if people regularly walked to work over the floor of the Black Sea or if it was somehow a major transportation corridor, there might be some interest in doing something about them. But anything that is in hundreds of feet of water that isn't in the way is probably better left alone.
I have a Kindle and I can use it several hours each day and charge it maybe once a week - and that is with turning the wireless on and doing some poking around online. The battery will last something like two weeks using 4-5 hours a day with the wireless off. And the screen is 4x the size of a Blackberry Storm or iPhone.
Your Blackberry (and mine, too) will last 3-4 of use hours without charging. So as long as you are happy with that, a Kindle probably doesn't make any sense for you.
A Kindle will last for the entire flight from Chicago to Sydney. If you haven't done that trip, I certainly recommend it. Sydney is probably one of the best places on the planet. However, if you don't go there, you may not need that kind of battery life.
I keep seeing this, and I do not understand where it comes from. The Kindle is locked in the same way that Windows is locked - you can only run Microsoft software on Windows unless you have a brain.
The Kindle can wirelessly download books from Manybooks.net, Baen and many other sites. It does this for free with no interaction with Amazon. You can back these books up and copy them to other Kindles as well.
Not sure about Australia, but UK has a rather funny law that says the government owns the ability to produce maps. Period. To go out and survey the land requires permission and a license. You are better off just licensing their data in the first place and save yourself all that trouble.
If Australia is operating under the same rules, then all map data for Australia is licensed by the government and you can't just go out and make your own survey.
There are a number of places like this in the world. I believe several countries in South America have similar laws. Mexico might as well, which is why getting detailed street maps for Mexico is rather difficult. Not to mention their awful way of naming streets.
As someone who used to work for one of the three digital map database companies in the world, I would offer that if this information were not copyrightable it would be difficult to justify the investment in producing them as they could simply be republished by anyone.
Trade secret would be a bit of a stretch and I don't see any grounds for patentability. So copyright is the only protection against redistribution they have.
I'd say the investors would have pulled the plug a long time ago without something to keep republishing from happening as that would pretty much eliminate the revenue from selling map data.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you really believe sanctions would have any effect on countries that would do this?
Ignoring the obvious places, like China, how about if Chile was found to be doing this purely for economic gain? Do you really think the US could do much to Chile? How about Romania or Bulgaria? Would US sanctions mean much to them? I don't think so.
Also, no matter what the US did, many countries in Europe would ignore it. Just as we are seeing with Iran and previously with Iraq. If France can get money by selling weapons to Iran, they will do it regardless of what the US thinks of the deal. I seriously doubt the US has the clout at the international level to really make sanctions stick today.
So that pretty much means nothing would happen. China, North Korea and other places like Bulgaria know this. Sure, they aren't overtly attacking anyone today, but good luck tracing credit card fraud and not involving some of those places. Today, they just aren't interested in assisting law enforcement efforts against their people. It could certainly get worse.
Sorry, but the manufacturing trend was started in the 1980s and accelerated by NAFTA. Everyone was warned about the consequences, but the appeal of millions of wealthy Mexicans being able to buy American products was just too great. Except then we found out that the Mexicans weren't all that wealthy and were a lot more interested in buying cheap, locally grown food rather than buying stuff that we actually imported from China.
The problem today is that it is pretty much a one-way trip. Talk about creating tariffs on goods manufactured in low-wage countries will get you a healthy slap from WTO. Bush II tried that with steel and was rather firmly rebuffed. Sorry, in the name of globalization we have removed barriers that prevented manufacturers from seeking the lowest wages and now it is economically unfeasible to consider stopping.
About the only thing that would stop this now would be an open shooting war with China.
What people don't get is there is a huge difference between the US as a place with cheap, plentiful labor and the US as a place with high-cost labor. In the 1930s Hoover Dam was constructed - today it would be impossible because of both worker safety and labor cost. Similarly, any large scale construction project is never going to get off the ground - the people that would do this know that for each mile of bridge or tunnel X people are going to be killed. No matter how small X is, it doesn't matter - OSHA, insurance companies and the like are never going to allow X people to be killed. So no construction project of that kind of scale. The workers are too valuable.
Similarly, we aren't going to be bringing back manufacturing jobs. Nobody wants to buy a $100 broom. Especially not when the same broom costs $2.50 from China. And nobody wants to suggest that the workers making $27.50 an hour are paid too much. Between government regulations and the unions you aren't going to have an opportunity to bring back manufacturing to the US.
The devices that were fooled were old optical devices. These are a joke and shouldn't be used for anything, ever.
The "real" fingerprint reader uses RF to scan multiple layers of skin and detects a pulse in the finger. So a gummy bear finger will not work, and a "decapitated" finger will not work. Really, nothing works except a real, living finger.
Authentec makes these devices and they are one of the few companies making ones that work.
Any fingerprint system that does not require both human skin and a pulse is an inferior solution. Most palm print readers are only good when monitored by a guard to prevent the use of anything except a real palm.
However, fingerprint readers that do require both human skin and a pulse are available. Using an optical reader which allows simple fakes - like a "gummi finger" - is just plain silly. All of the "testing" that has been done showing how these devices are easily spoofed has all been done with optical readers, not the RF based ones.
There are no electrical connections on a liquid sensor - it is just a pad that changes color when it is exposed to water - or even high humidity. The purposes of this is to detect that a phone has been exposed to water, which will really screw it up. Thus, phones that have color-changed liquid sensors are not eligible for warranty replacement.
Do you believe the penalty for murder should be different if a hit man gets paid?
Compensation for most actions is irrelevent. You might not go to work if you didn't get paid, but just about everything else the compensation is irrelevent.
The problem is today that so many parents are more than happy to turn over teaching morality to someone else - anyone else that might be handy. This includes school, church, fellow students, random adults at the mall, anybody. Anyone that is willing to spend the time.
Of course, what this results in is a totally borked situation where you have people thinking that as long as they get away with it, anything is OK. And a good portion of the folks that in yesteryear might have helped the parents out either no longer exist or just aren't interested in anymore because of overload and mission creep.
So if you actually want to try to instill some sort of morality in your children, great. Except unless you accept the idea that you are in the minority you are going to be trying to get everyone out of "parent's territory". A lot of parents, and I'd say most of them today, aren't as interested as you are. So trying to get things changed so it is always only the parent's role is just going to leave us in a much worse situation than we are in now in 20 years.
It isn't great that schools try to get into this when they are generally incapable of doing a good job. However, in today's world what else is there? TV? Movie stars? Are there any role models that would be good for children to look up to? Is there anyone that has enough interaction with children today to actually be able to provide a role model and some kind of morality? The answer for the most part is that if the parents, grandparents and siblings aren't going to do any "parenting" then the only other actor in the child's life is school. Sucks, doesn't it?
This doesn't really excuse what is described here, but what we are faced with is some kind of "community parenting" and nobody knows who is doing what or what they should be doing exactly. So you see a lot of experiments. Some of these experiments involve people convincing teenagers to run away from home, become prostitutes and give their new guardian the money. Some get the children into strange cults in the name of "giving the children religion" which the adults seem to think is necessary and important. I'm sure there are other experiments which turn out to be good, worthwhile and constructive. Sadly, you don't see very many of those.
We're going to have to learn how to manage this because for the most part, the parents aren't going to do it. This is especially true when the parent is a 15 year old girl that saw the father once or twice and managed to get pregnant.
I don't know if it still works, but Back Orifice would do this. My guess is there is some current version of this that will do it as well.
There will be no superconducting power lines built. Are you at all familiar with the huge numbers of people that believe that power lines cause cancer, impotence and a raft of other maladies?
First, you would have to convince people that the power lines aren't going to kill them or destroy their children's chances of being gifted. So far, that hasn't happened.
Then you would have to make sure the new power lines were pretty and that no small creatures were being harmed by the construction. Anytime there is construction that might cause small creatures discomfort or disturb their habitat there is a huge outcry from a couple of people. Years later, the lawsuit stopping construction is dismissed, but by that time nobody really cares anymore - the project was abandoned.
1. There are no unions in Japan.
2. While labor costs aren't low, they are a heck of a lot lower than in the US.
3. Did I say no unions?
4. There are no tariffs on importing cars. That was resolved a long time ago. Now if we want to sell rice to Japan we find out that our open trading agreements do not apply to such crops which are vital to the national security of Japan. Therefore, the can be no imports of rice. Or just about anything else to Japan.
And if the people around naval bases had any input on the matter, there would be none of these.
About the only way a nuclear powerplant is getting built is if the government tells the environmentalists to sit down and shut up. Instead, we are going to have to move to a "conserve" mode whereby a small shortage in base load capacity is transformed into a major lack of capacity.
End result will likely be power just gets turned off. Rolling blackouts, but on a very predictable schedule. Or, every home has a box to turn off the air conditioner when commanded to do so. They have this in Florida already.
Residential photovoltaics are great, except there is this little problem with the cost. You can get all sorts of rebates and tax credits to offset the cost - only problem is the payoff is still about 10 years out.
How many people plan on living in the same house for 10 years today? History shows not many.
Current pricing is at least $25,000 for a house-size system unless you have a one-room shack without air conditioning. You can get about 50% of that back within a couple of years. The other 50% (at least $12,500) would be recouped at around $100 a month, if that. That's 10 years.
And that is pretty much how it works in Arizona. Chicago (where I used to live) would be a much longer payback, maybe 20 years.
Sure, they are going to plan to build a power plant. Sure.
This will get to the "environmental impact statement" level and some public comment. The company contracted to build it will discover it will take five years to get through the multiple environmental impact studies, neighborhood meetings and protests. They will forget about the project at that point.
Unless some comprehensive federal regulations were put in force, I don't see the US building a lot of new power plants any time soon. Are they needed? Sure, we are running out of base capacity. But are the average people convinced they need to have new power plants? No, they aren't. And they are perfectly willing to let environmental activists control the entire process, supposedly in their name.
If the current situation doesn't change, we are going to just have to cut back on electricity usage. So much for the idea of plug-in hybrid cars. Where, exactly are you going to plug them in? Certainly nowhere during the day.
Create a single-member LLC and get yourself an TIN. You may be able to do this with a partnership as well. In some places it is just cheaper to get a corporation. No matter what, you too can get a SSN-like tax id number that has no connection to your previous credit history.
I think Survivor and The Batchelor are cheaper to produce than American Idol.
I'd expect a lot more shows looking like that. Cheap, totally fake medical shows that are really just a gossipy nurses-chasing-doctors story are probably pretty cheap to produce as well.
This is the kind of show you will be seeing in the future as disposable incomes shrink and people just aren't spending as much. Therefore, ad budgets will shrink and production costs will have to be trimmed.
Most businesses these days want to minimize their risk. If there is any risk involved that you might do something irresponsible, they figure a credit report will tell them if you are responsible or not. This may not be 100% accurate, but seems to have a good correlation.
So, they need your SSN to pull a credit report. You can certainly refuse, and they will simply say that you aren't worth the unknown risk.
This has nothing to do with credit. Insurance agents cannot insure you without a credit report these days, because of the level of risk and the abuses that have occurred. Want to get a satellite dish? DirecTV wants a credit report because if you are a high risk they probably don't want to bother with you.
So sure, they don't need your SSN. But most businesses that ask for it these days aren't going to do anything for you if you aren't going to supply it. Lots don't ask, and they aren't looking to mitigate any kind of risk.
It is all about the risk, and evidently time has shown that lousy credit means you are a high risk for default, fraud and just being irreponsible.
All manufacturing involves damage to the environment, and if we weren't making batteries it'd be something else. We can work on making manufacturing less damaging, but it's not going away.
Not going away? In the US it mostly has, already. Oh sure, all we did was move to somewhere else where lower labor costs are. But the whole point of making do with less is less manufacturing, less consumption and less waste.
You'd be surprised how few manufactured products a Bandledeshi farmer uses in a year. Or even sees. So there are people living on the planet that are getting along fine without lots of manufactured stuff.
As Al Gore how much closer Americans should be getting to the lifestyle of a Bangledeshi farmer. Think about it - no more obesity, no more Type II Diabetes, no more smog. Maybe a lot more horse manure, but as the cities shrink that won't be much of a problem. And the cities will shrink because (a) no more immigration - who'd want to come here then? and (b) who wants to bring children into a world like that?
Credit cards? Why do you care?
Every time you use a credit card there is a substantial risk that it will be "borrowed". Credit card numbers are worth money, while not a lot of money individually if you have a couple hundred from week's worth of "collecting" then you can sell them and get something - maybe $20-$50 or so. Maybe more. Keep doing this, week after week and this can make up for a crappy salary from a retail job.
What happens? Well, the card holder has to get a new card. The credit card company takes it out on the merchant that took the card, but they usually have insurance so no loss there. Basically, nobody loses unless you count the insurance company. And nobody likes insurance companies, now do they?
I get my cards "borrowed" and actually used at least once a year. After the first couple of times you realize that the option to sell them is extremely attractive to anyone that thinks they aren't getting paid enough. There is a certain amount of risk, but as credit card companies almost never prosecute (or more accurately, assist the police and file a complaint), the risk is really quite small.
You want to stop credit card fraud? There may not be a way. You can't make the credit card issuer liable because then there would be no penalty for the merchant and/or cardholder to assist with fraud. Going after the cardholder doesn't help - people would just stop using credit cards. It might help if the credit card companies actually went after the people committing the fraud, but not all that much.
Probably the most key item in that list (which is missing) is the depth at which the bomb is at. Anything over a few hundred feet is going to be difficult to find and until fairly recently almost impossible to recover. I remember a recovery operation involving the first Alvin submersible where they were able to snag a parachute to recover a warhead, which was the first such recovery in deep water.
Today I suppose it might be possible to recover something in 10,000 feet of water, but you would have to find it. Saying "they found the Titanic" doesn't count because it is a massive object on the floor of the ocean in a place where there literally is nothing else around. Finding a bomb in an area where the sea floor isn't flat would be a huge challenge. Probably beyond the limit of what anyone is willing to dog today and well into the future.
Not all 150,000 pieces of ordinace are mines - there are plenty of unexploded bombs and other stuff that goes BOOM as well. But probably only a small fraction of this is in the way of the pipeline.
Now, if people regularly walked to work over the floor of the Black Sea or if it was somehow a major transportation corridor, there might be some interest in doing something about them. But anything that is in hundreds of feet of water that isn't in the way is probably better left alone.
Two words: battery life
I have a Kindle and I can use it several hours each day and charge it maybe once a week - and that is with turning the wireless on and doing some poking around online. The battery will last something like two weeks using 4-5 hours a day with the wireless off. And the screen is 4x the size of a Blackberry Storm or iPhone.
Your Blackberry (and mine, too) will last 3-4 of use hours without charging. So as long as you are happy with that, a Kindle probably doesn't make any sense for you.
A Kindle will last for the entire flight from Chicago to Sydney. If you haven't done that trip, I certainly recommend it. Sydney is probably one of the best places on the planet. However, if you don't go there, you may not need that kind of battery life.
I keep seeing this, and I do not understand where it comes from. The Kindle is locked in the same way that Windows is locked - you can only run Microsoft software on Windows unless you have a brain.
The Kindle can wirelessly download books from Manybooks.net, Baen and many other sites. It does this for free with no interaction with Amazon. You can back these books up and copy them to other Kindles as well.
I don't think I would call that "locked".
Not sure about Australia, but UK has a rather funny law that says the government owns the ability to produce maps. Period. To go out and survey the land requires permission and a license. You are better off just licensing their data in the first place and save yourself all that trouble.
If Australia is operating under the same rules, then all map data for Australia is licensed by the government and you can't just go out and make your own survey.
There are a number of places like this in the world. I believe several countries in South America have similar laws. Mexico might as well, which is why getting detailed street maps for Mexico is rather difficult. Not to mention their awful way of naming streets.
Further, I'd say that the US data could be extracted in Oz and then sold in the US.
Without copyright republishing is perfectly permissible. Might as well make some money while you are at it.
As someone who used to work for one of the three digital map database companies in the world, I would offer that if this information were not copyrightable it would be difficult to justify the investment in producing them as they could simply be republished by anyone.
Trade secret would be a bit of a stretch and I don't see any grounds for patentability. So copyright is the only protection against redistribution they have.
I'd say the investors would have pulled the plug a long time ago without something to keep republishing from happening as that would pretty much eliminate the revenue from selling map data.