There ought to be some kind of test to verify the voter actually UNDERSTANDS who is voting for. Something like:
"Is Obama a Republican?"
If the voter can not properly answer the question then he forfeits his right to vote due to Mental Incompetence. Mentally-incompetent people are typically treated the same way, legally, as a minor. Minors can not vote.
>>>Nintendo is already putting units out at an unprecedented rate compared to any system current or past.
Bzzzz. The PS2 sold 100 million units in just four years time. If we take the Wii's sale numbers and extrapolate, it will only sell 60 million in its first four years.
The PS2 is the console that sold at an unprecedented rate.
>>>It allowed JP Morgan to buy Bear Stearns and Bank of America to buy Merrill Lynch, instead of allowing those two investment banks to crash.
If the original 1933 Law was still in effect, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch would still be standing, because they would have been forbidden from investing in housing stocks/securities. They would be stable.
If the 1999 act had not repealed the provision about banks speculating in stocks, the banks that collapsed this past year would still be standing, because they would have been almost-completely unaffected by the stock market fall.
>>>Bill couldn't have vetoed that bill since it was passed as a veto-proof majority.
That's not how it works.
- the Congress passes a bill - the president vetoes it - the Congress has a SECOND 66.7% vote to pass the bill. In the interim some members particularly Democrats, influenced by the president's action, might reconsider their vote and cast "nay". - the bill fails
You cannot presume that just because a bill passed once, it will pass again, especially when the second vote requires a supermajority of 2/3rds, and especially if you can get the Democrats to stand-behind their President's veto.
Actually tvfool.org supports the "generalization". According to their published article the difference between NTSC TV (analog) and ATSC TV (digital) means the average American drops from 15 analog to just 12 digital stations.
So "theaveng" was correct when he said his digital reception became less than his analog reception. That's pretty typical, and people who see more stations is the Exception not the norm.
What if they had discovered that Joe the Plumber's favorite website is purenudism.com. Do you really think the government would have kept quiet about it? No of course not; it would be leaked onto the internet that Joe's a pedophile (false) and he might even be charged for having child porn (which would eventually be dropped since there's no porn at that site; but the damage is already done). The end result would be Joe losing customers, maybe even picketing his house & demanding he move-out (vigilante justice), and ultimately driven out of business, even though he did nothing illegal.
All because some government employees decided to spy on Joe's private surfing.
THIS time they found nothing, but next time they spy on a citizen they might discover information to be used to ruin that guy's life.
There are some things you left out, which are tactics of not just the Left, but also the Right:
- the never-ending war to constantly justify intrusion upon private citizen's lives
- the changing of enemies (from Nazis to Communists to Saddam Hussein to Kosovo to Terrorists) to justify maintenance of a Corporate-Industrial Military
- and also to always keep citizens afraid & dependent upon "daddy government" to protect them.
Another tactic which Orwell did not think of is the "protect the children" argument which apparently justifies everything, even the taking-away of freedom of speech on the internet (kill Usenet discussion forums, censor nudist websites, censor Japanese anime/comics, block so-called racist books like Huckleberry Finn).
Ever heard of EZpass? It can track you as you drive the I-76 interstate system from Ohio's eastern border to the Atlantic, and from West Virginia northward along I-95 to southern Maine.
Cue the tape! Fast-forward to minute 5. This video shows employees who were hired by "Homeland Security" to spy on a potential terrorist. Instead, they decided to spy on a private house where man/lady were having sex.
This spying on Joe the Plumber is essentially the same thing - an invasion of privacy. Now I know you'll probably argue this is just a show, but having worked for the government, I can confirm that your information is Not secure. People are reading things about you that you don't want them to know (like how much you're paying to child support, or how much you earn, or how many times you got speeding tickets).
No you cannot. Take a typical show like CSI which is watched by 30 million viewers each week. It's broadcast by 200 stations at approximately 15 megabit/s. If broadcast television was discontinued and CSI provided by ABC.com, it would need a bandwidth of 500,000 gigabit/s bandwidth. There is no way that this or any other website could handle that huge load.
Singlecasting of 30 million copies of CSI via internet is not logical. It makes much more sense to send just 200 copies over-the-air, and let anyone with an antenna pick it up.
Perhaps the U.S. Army could cross the Rubicon..... er, I mean the Potomac in December and install George Bush as a permanent president (Princeps). After all, we need to fight terrorism and Obama wants to end the fight, therefore we (the Army) cannot allow Obama to take over.
And thus the Republic falls, replaced with an Imperator government. All in the name of "protecting the U.S. from terrorists, foreign and domestic".
Australia's Supreme Court, if it was doing its job, would also recognize that nudity is nor pornography. The E.U. Court of First Instance has already agreed with the SCOTUS that nudity is not illegal, regardless of age. Why Australia's Supremes are out-of-step makes no sense to me.
There's nothing on the internet that I censor from my kids. (1) A naked human body is not obscene; it's beautiful and should never be censored (imho). (2) Sex produces one of God's greatest creations: my kids and babies in general, so why hide it? It would be contradictory for me to act as if sex is bad, and yet say "it's a wonderful thing that made you my child". Besides I have to teach them about sex someday, and now is as good a time as any. ----- (3) Animal sex like "goatse" I personally find disgusting, but again, I don't see any reason to block it from my children. It's better for them to deal with that stuff NOW, while I'm there to answer questions, then to have my kids see that website when they're alone in their college dorm and have nobody to turn-to.
Basically I see no reason to hide anything. It's my job not just to teach my kids the good stuff, but also how to deal with the bad things they encounter. It's better to do it now, rather than to procrastinate until it's too late, and I'm not there to provide support.
I guess it's a good thing the United States is NOT a democracy. It's a Republic of laws, and those laws affirm the rights of the individual to run his own life with minimal interference. As one of the Founders Thomas Jefferson stated so eloquently, "We would have no government if it were possible. It is only to protect our rights that we resort to government."
Or as James Madison said: "If men were angels, we would not need government." But of course men are not angels, which is why government is needed to protect our right of life (against murder), our right to property (against theft), and our right to liberty (against enslavement).
We are not a Democracy. We are a Republic that embraces the ideal of individual liberty and sovereignty & use Law to protect them.
If the "court" is the Supreme Court of the United States, then I'll be freed, because the justices have already affirmed (several times) that nudity is not pornography, regardless if the person in the photo is an adult, a teen, or a child. That is why nudist websites are perfectly legal within the U.S.
P.S. I just noticed this disturbing comment from the article:
Mark McHenry, CEO of Shared Spectrum Co., said, "The FCC is going to start conservatively, but we're going to wear them down. In a few years, we're going to be at 10 W all over the place." Of course, at these power levels, not only will free over-the-air TV reception be impossible in locations where WSDs are in use, but cable TV reception will be impaired as well. An article Tuesday, Skip the Cable TV and Go Straight to Broadband, at dailypress.com, questions the need for conventional TV, noting that people can watch their favorite shows over the Internet. "The bottom line is that mass availability of wireless broadband Internet could eventually make cable TV irrelevant; even obsolete."
=========
That guy's nuts. If the entire 2-51 spectrum was opened to internet devices, you'd have 1000 Megabit/s of space (per city). That might sound like a lot, but when you divide by 0.5 million residents in a local community, that's only 2 kbit/s. That's worse than phoneline internet! You can't stream video over a 2k connection.
* "in a few years a second phase of the DTV transition should get TV off the air."
* "Take TV off the air in a few years."
* "over-the-air broadcasts should be replaced entirely by cable, satellite and Internet viewing."
I misspoke. It was actually a document from the Whitespace Coalition (google, microsoft, et cetera). Their goal is to first approve Whitespace Devices to operate "between channels", and then their next goal (2010) is to get approval to hand-out free Satellites to any OTA viewers who are still left so the WSDs can take-over the entire 2-to-51 spectrum without restriction.
I found this document on the avsforum.com but unfortunately it's down, so I can't give you the direct link.
Then don't watch it. That's your right, but you do NOT have a right to take-away from those of us who happen to enjoy shows like Heroes, CSI, Lost, Twenty-Four, or Supernatural. You are just one, whereas there are ~90% of americans who enjoy television and don't want to lose it. That's not just a majority; or a mere supermajority. It's a constitutional majority (over three-fourths).
(2) >>>Most of those 30 million people are watching the SD version.
You're probably correct about that, but come February 18 *everybody* will be watching HDTV. It might be downgraded to fit their old analog sets, but the source signal will still be HD with a bandwidth of approximately 15 Mbit/s. HDTV is here. It's too late to turn-back the clock.
>>>Please come up with some better arguments than this crap
Okay. When WSDs happen and I can't watch my favorite WPHL-17 or WBAL-11 because your whitespace-enabled Ipod is interfering with these channels, I'm going to take a hammer and smash it to pieces. That's a VERY effective argument. Television was there first; we viewers have the "first claim" to that space... a claim that goes all the way back to the 1930s. It's a shame that internet users arrived ~80 years too late, but that's just too fucking bad. It doesn't give you the right to take OUR airwaves away from us.
Next I suppose you'll want to take my house and build a new "internet cafe" building using eminent domain. Well, they tried that in York PA... tried to take a family farm via eminent domain "for the benefit of the public". Fortunately the PA supreme court declared it to be "theft" and returned the farm to the family, along with a fine levied on the York government for abuse of power.
You can NOT steal other people's claims, just because you BELIEVE you have a better use for the land (or the spectrum).
The FCC has a rule that whichever service occupies a range of frequencies has first priority. Television arrived first in the 1930s, and certainly has first priority. The FCC is obligated to protect television transmission from interference of other devices.
If you reject that, consider the distribution of Heroes in HDTV. Which is more efficient? - Eliminating television, and sending 30,000,000 copies to 30 million viewers via NBC.com? - Keeping television and sending 200 copies to reach those same viewers via 200 terrestrial stations?
I think the answer is obvious. BROAD-cast of 200 copies of the show is far more efficient and logical than single-casting 30,000,000 copies. (Plus it's doubtful NBC.com could handle the required 500,000 gigabit demand of streaming Heroes in HD.)
Who hasn't been intrigued by the Bra section or the Bikini section in a Sears (or especially Victoria's Secret) catalog? The women in those pages are gorgeous, and no I'm not ashamed to say that. There is no shame in acknowledging the beauty of the human body. And it's certainly not deviant. What Shakespeare said with irony, I say with conviction:
"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable. In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!"
The human body is a work of art, and there is reason to censor it off the internet, regardless if it's 5 years, 25 years, or 50 years old.
Yes but these laws ARE about morality. In this case, it's about some Christian wackos trying to impose their morality that "nudity is wrong" upon the rest of us. Separation of church & state should forbid this from happening. The church should not be able to use the state to impose it's morals on non-church members.
To quote Thomas Jefferson: "Whether my neighbor worships one god, or many gods, matters not to me. It does not harm my property, my person, nor my rights. It matters not to me how my neighbor chooses to worship." Similarly if my neighbor decides to go visit a nudist beach, and take photos of his children and wife, that's fine. I will allow him the freedom to do so, because that act does not harm me, my property, or my rights. It matters not to me, nor should it matter to the government. Leave the poor guy alone; don't arrest him.
The only time it matters if the guy forces a child to have sex. Only then has a right been violated (because it's can cause physical harm).
Slashdot Mirror
There ought to be some kind of test to verify the voter actually UNDERSTANDS who is voting for. Something like:
"Is Obama a Republican?"
If the voter can not properly answer the question then he forfeits his right to vote due to Mental Incompetence. Mentally-incompetent people are typically treated the same way, legally, as a minor. Minors can not vote.
Made In The USA.
False. The PS2 had sold almost 50 million units during its first two years.
The Wii has just hit the 30 million mark.
>>>Nintendo is already putting units out at an unprecedented rate compared to any system current or past.
Bzzzz. The PS2 sold 100 million units in just four years time. If we take the Wii's sale numbers and extrapolate, it will only sell 60 million in its first four years.
The PS2 is the console that sold at an unprecedented rate.
>>>It allowed JP Morgan to buy Bear Stearns and Bank of America to buy Merrill Lynch, instead of allowing those two investment banks to crash.
If the original 1933 Law was still in effect, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch would still be standing, because they would have been forbidden from investing in housing stocks/securities. They would be stable.
If the 1999 act had not repealed the provision about banks speculating in stocks, the banks that collapsed this past year would still be standing, because they would have been almost-completely unaffected by the stock market fall.
>>>Bill couldn't have vetoed that bill since it was passed as a veto-proof majority.
That's not how it works.
- the Congress passes a bill
- the president vetoes it
- the Congress has a SECOND 66.7% vote to pass the bill. In the interim some members particularly Democrats, influenced by the president's action, might reconsider their vote and cast "nay".
- the bill fails
You cannot presume that just because a bill passed once, it will pass again, especially when the second vote requires a supermajority of 2/3rds, and especially if you can get the Democrats to stand-behind their President's veto.
Not 6 Mbps. 6Mhz as in 6 megahertz.
That's how wide each broadcast television channel is. It supports just over 19 Mbit/s of data.
Actually tvfool.org supports the "generalization". According to their published article the difference between NTSC TV (analog) and ATSC TV (digital) means the average American drops from 15 analog to just 12 digital stations.
So "theaveng" was correct when he said his digital reception became less than his analog reception. That's pretty typical, and people who see more stations is the Exception not the norm.
What if they had discovered that Joe the Plumber's favorite website is purenudism.com. Do you really think the government would have kept quiet about it? No of course not; it would be leaked onto the internet that Joe's a pedophile (false) and he might even be charged for having child porn (which would eventually be dropped since there's no porn at that site; but the damage is already done). The end result would be Joe losing customers, maybe even picketing his house & demanding he move-out (vigilante justice), and ultimately driven out of business, even though he did nothing illegal.
All because some government employees decided to spy on Joe's private surfing.
THIS time they found nothing, but next time they spy on a citizen they might discover information to be used to ruin that guy's life.
There are some things you left out, which are tactics of not just the Left, but also the Right:
- the never-ending war to constantly justify intrusion upon private citizen's lives
- the changing of enemies (from Nazis to Communists to Saddam Hussein to Kosovo to Terrorists) to justify maintenance of a Corporate-Industrial Military
- and also to always keep citizens afraid & dependent upon "daddy government" to protect them.
Another tactic which Orwell did not think of is the "protect the children" argument which apparently justifies everything, even the taking-away of freedom of speech on the internet (kill Usenet discussion forums, censor nudist websites, censor Japanese anime/comics, block so-called racist books like Huckleberry Finn).
Ever heard of EZpass? It can track you as you drive the I-76 interstate system from Ohio's eastern border to the Atlantic, and from West Virginia northward along I-95 to southern Maine.
Cue the tape! Fast-forward to minute 5. This video shows employees who were hired by "Homeland Security" to spy on a potential terrorist. Instead, they decided to spy on a private house where man/lady were having sex.
This spying on Joe the Plumber is essentially the same thing - an invasion of privacy. Now I know you'll probably argue this is just a show, but having worked for the government, I can confirm that your information is Not secure. People are reading things about you that you don't want them to know (like how much you're paying to child support, or how much you earn, or how many times you got speeding tickets).
LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92xf94JPoB8&feature=related
>>>You can broadcast TV over the Internet
No you cannot. Take a typical show like CSI which is watched by 30 million viewers each week. It's broadcast by 200 stations at approximately 15 megabit/s. If broadcast television was discontinued and CSI provided by ABC.com, it would need a bandwidth of 500,000 gigabit/s bandwidth. There is no way that this or any other website could handle that huge load.
Singlecasting of 30 million copies of CSI via internet is not logical. It makes much more sense to send just 200 copies over-the-air, and let anyone with an antenna pick it up.
Perhaps the U.S. Army could cross the Rubicon..... er, I mean the Potomac in December and install George Bush as a permanent president (Princeps). After all, we need to fight terrorism and Obama wants to end the fight, therefore we (the Army) cannot allow Obama to take over.
And thus the Republic falls, replaced with an Imperator government. All in the name of "protecting the U.S. from terrorists, foreign and domestic".
Australia's Supreme Court, if it was doing its job, would also recognize that nudity is nor pornography. The E.U. Court of First Instance has already agreed with the SCOTUS that nudity is not illegal, regardless of age. Why Australia's Supremes are out-of-step makes no sense to me.
>>>make it an over 18 network ?
There's nothing on the internet that I censor from my kids. (1) A naked human body is not obscene; it's beautiful and should never be censored (imho). (2) Sex produces one of God's greatest creations: my kids and babies in general, so why hide it? It would be contradictory for me to act as if sex is bad, and yet say "it's a wonderful thing that made you my child". Besides I have to teach them about sex someday, and now is as good a time as any. ----- (3) Animal sex like "goatse" I personally find disgusting, but again, I don't see any reason to block it from my children. It's better for them to deal with that stuff NOW, while I'm there to answer questions, then to have my kids see that website when they're alone in their college dorm and have nobody to turn-to.
Basically I see no reason to hide anything. It's my job not just to teach my kids the good stuff, but also how to deal with the bad things they encounter. It's better to do it now, rather than to procrastinate until it's too late, and I'm not there to provide support.
I guess it's a good thing the United States is NOT a democracy. It's a Republic of laws, and those laws affirm the rights of the individual to run his own life with minimal interference. As one of the Founders Thomas Jefferson stated so eloquently, "We would have no government if it were possible. It is only to protect our rights that we resort to government."
Or as James Madison said: "If men were angels, we would not need government." But of course men are not angels, which is why government is needed to protect our right of life (against murder), our right to property (against theft), and our right to liberty (against enslavement).
We are not a Democracy. We are a Republic that embraces the ideal of individual liberty and sovereignty & use Law to protect them.
If the "court" is the Supreme Court of the United States, then I'll be freed, because the justices have already affirmed (several times) that nudity is not pornography, regardless if the person in the photo is an adult, a teen, or a child. That is why nudist websites are perfectly legal within the U.S.
P.S. I just noticed this disturbing comment from the article:
Mark McHenry, CEO of Shared Spectrum Co., said, "The FCC is going to start conservatively, but we're going to wear them down. In a few years, we're going to be at 10 W all over the place." Of course, at these power levels, not only will free over-the-air TV reception be impossible in locations where WSDs are in use, but cable TV reception will be impaired as well. An article Tuesday, Skip the Cable TV and Go Straight to Broadband, at dailypress.com, questions the need for conventional TV, noting that people can watch their favorite shows over the Internet. "The bottom line is that mass availability of wireless broadband Internet could eventually make cable TV irrelevant; even obsolete."
=========
That guy's nuts. If the entire 2-51 spectrum was opened to internet devices, you'd have 1000 Megabit/s of space (per city). That might sound like a lot, but when you divide by 0.5 million residents in a local community, that's only 2 kbit/s. That's worse than phoneline internet! You can't stream video over a 2k connection.
http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/68654 ----- Some of the comments of white space proponents:
* "in a few years a second phase of the DTV transition should get TV off the air."
* "Take TV off the air in a few years."
* "over-the-air broadcasts should be replaced entirely by cable, satellite and Internet viewing."
I misspoke. It was actually a document from the Whitespace Coalition (google, microsoft, et cetera). Their goal is to first approve Whitespace Devices to operate "between channels", and then their next goal (2010) is to get approval to hand-out free Satellites to any OTA viewers who are still left so the WSDs can take-over the entire 2-to-51 spectrum without restriction.
I found this document on the avsforum.com but unfortunately it's down, so I can't give you the direct link.
(1) >>>My answer to all of these things is: no.
Then don't watch it. That's your right, but you do NOT have a right to take-away from those of us who happen to enjoy shows like Heroes, CSI, Lost, Twenty-Four, or Supernatural. You are just one, whereas there are ~90% of americans who enjoy television and don't want to lose it. That's not just a majority; or a mere supermajority. It's a constitutional majority (over three-fourths).
(2) >>>Most of those 30 million people are watching the SD version.
You're probably correct about that, but come February 18 *everybody* will be watching HDTV. It might be downgraded to fit their old analog sets, but the source signal will still be HD with a bandwidth of approximately 15 Mbit/s. HDTV is here. It's too late to turn-back the clock.
>>>Please come up with some better arguments than this crap
Okay. When WSDs happen and I can't watch my favorite WPHL-17 or WBAL-11 because your whitespace-enabled Ipod is interfering with these channels, I'm going to take a hammer and smash it to pieces. That's a VERY effective argument. Television was there first; we viewers have the "first claim" to that space... a claim that goes all the way back to the 1930s. It's a shame that internet users arrived ~80 years too late, but that's just too fucking bad. It doesn't give you the right to take OUR airwaves away from us.
Next I suppose you'll want to take my house and build a new "internet cafe" building using eminent domain. Well, they tried that in York PA... tried to take a family farm via eminent domain "for the benefit of the public". Fortunately the PA supreme court declared it to be "theft" and returned the farm to the family, along with a fine levied on the York government for abuse of power.
You can NOT steal other people's claims, just because you BELIEVE you have a better use for the land (or the spectrum).
The FCC has a rule that whichever service occupies a range of frequencies has first priority. Television arrived first in the 1930s, and certainly has first priority. The FCC is obligated to protect television transmission from interference of other devices.
If you reject that, consider the distribution of Heroes in HDTV. Which is more efficient?
- Eliminating television, and sending 30,000,000 copies to 30 million viewers via NBC.com?
- Keeping television and sending 200 copies to reach those same viewers via 200 terrestrial stations?
I think the answer is obvious. BROAD-cast of 200 copies of the show is far more efficient and logical than single-casting 30,000,000 copies. (Plus it's doubtful NBC.com could handle the required 500,000 gigabit demand of streaming Heroes in HD.)
Who hasn't been intrigued by the Bra section or the Bikini section in a Sears (or especially Victoria's Secret) catalog? The women in those pages are gorgeous, and no I'm not ashamed to say that. There is no shame in acknowledging the beauty of the human body. And it's certainly not deviant. What Shakespeare said with irony, I say with conviction:
"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable. In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!"
The human body is a work of art, and there is reason to censor it off the internet, regardless if it's 5 years, 25 years, or 50 years old.
Yes but these laws ARE about morality. In this case, it's about some Christian wackos trying to impose their morality that "nudity is wrong" upon the rest of us. Separation of church & state should forbid this from happening. The church should not be able to use the state to impose it's morals on non-church members.
To quote Thomas Jefferson: "Whether my neighbor worships one god, or many gods, matters not to me. It does not harm my property, my person, nor my rights. It matters not to me how my neighbor chooses to worship." Similarly if my neighbor decides to go visit a nudist beach, and take photos of his children and wife, that's fine. I will allow him the freedom to do so, because that act does not harm me, my property, or my rights. It matters not to me, nor should it matter to the government. Leave the poor guy alone; don't arrest him.
The only time it matters if the guy forces a child to have sex. Only then has a right been violated (because it's can cause physical harm).