As math is wont to do, this argument grossly oversimplifies the issue. Of course a vote has "more power" if considered in the manner described in the article. You have more elections, the vote gets "more chances" to be counted. One vote gets lost in a sea of many in a direct election and "loses power". Oh please.
Oh, of course we can't have direct elections, because then we'll have the tyranny of the majority. Oh, heaven forbid that majority should rule in a democracy.
What the argument fails to actually do is demonstrate whether the will of the people is better represented in direct elections or electoral college elections. What would really best serve everyone is to look at the way other nations represent their people - the U.S. is one of the few countries in the world with a two-party system. Instead of actually having parlimentary representation with multiple parties that actually reflect the will of the people, we have to funnel everything into two parties that can blatantly ignore issues that are brought up by folks like Nader.
If we had direct elections and had more parties, we'd have more choices, and we'd be able to get a better voice in government. In other countries, five different parties can win seats in a parliament, get proportional representation of the people's vote, and then the parliament actually has to work together and talk to each other to get consensus. Imagine being free of the gridlock caused by only having two parties that won't budge against each other!
ABOLISH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE; WE WANT DIRECT ELECTIONS
What I'm wondering is whether I'll be able to go after entities that use my published content. Are rich corporations with armies of lawyers the only ones who will benefit from this law?
Can I sue resume spidering job boards that republish my resume without my permission?
Can I sue search engines? Do the results of crawlers and indexes count as republishing my content without my permission?
TransOrbital Offers the 1st Commercial Spaceflight to the Moon
A Project Participation Opportunity with a For-Profit Space Venture
Solicitation of Interest
Not only will the 2001 TrailBlazer Project be the first commercial spaceflight to the Moon; it will also return the first video from the Moon in thirty years. The video will be of very high quality and digitally enhanced, showing the lunar surface details as has never been seen before.
The entire Project is intended to cost a small fraction of what it would cost NASA to complete a similar project.
TransOrbital Inc. has developed a low-cost, video spacecraft project for lunar orbit. TransOrbital's commercially funded robotic spacecraft, 2001 TrailBlazer, will return HDTV video from lunar orbit for use as Internet content and other commercial products. The privately held company has already arranged for a launch aboard the "Strela" launch vehicle. The 2001 TrailBlazer Project is a for-profit Space Venture and will produce high-quality video and other products such as:
The first advertising opportunity in lunar orbit
Video with lunar background showing corporate logos on a sub-spacecraft
Earthrise 2001: A defining video image for the New Millennium
Final de-orbit video, up to moment of impact
An atlas of the entire lunar surface for students & planetary scientists
High-resolution aerial photography of pre-targeted sites on the Moon
Low-altitude, high-speed video, for Hollywood science-fiction movies footage
The first deep space email service, from lunar orbit
Interactive Lunar Flight CD-ROM game made from the photography
The photos from lunar orbit will be very high resolution, utilizing a telescope with an HDTV camera. "We expect to be able to see the tire tracks from the Apollo-era rovers."
Excellent Website and Portal Content
"We want to do for the Moon what Jacques Cousteau did for marine exploration, to go, to see, sell the images as content and repeat it again and again." The Project will provide exceptional long-term content for TransOrbital customers' Internet portals during construction of the spacecraft, the launch, and throughout the spaceflight to the Moon. This exciting Project can propel customers' portals to the forefront of the Web, as the premiere sites for content, education and news about space and the Moon. The spacecraft will also provide small cargo delivery service for relics and personal & business cards, to a hard landing on the lunar surface.
The Project will be fully insured against launch and technical failure, assuring the return of deposits in the event of disaster, a welcome feature incorporated into TransOrbital's business plan. TransOrbital is seeking additional associates and customers for products created during the 2001 TrailBlazer Project.
Point of Contact: Gregory Nemitz VP, TransOrbital, Inc. 3672-A Bancroft St. San Diego, CA 92104 Tel: 619-528-0520 Fax: 619-693-3039 gnemitz@transorbital.net http://www.transorbital.net
The Mugar theatre at the Museum of Science is an OmniMax theatre, which is different from an IMAX theatre. I don't know if it's even possible to show an IMAX movie on an OmniMax screen...
Does social outcast status come from geek behavior, or vice versa? The column seems to state that because children appear smart, they become outcasts - why can't it work the other way? Couldn't a child become an outcast and then spend their time in geeky pursuit?
I've known plenty of people who "dumbed down" their behavior in order to become more accepted by a group. It makes sense to me that those aren't accepted might better spend their time learning instead of worrying about their popularity or appearance. Why does it always have to be their genes dictating their actions?
This article is just another misguided attempt to find some sort of "genetic root cause" for people's behavior. There may be people for whom this holds true, but I think environment is a much bigger factor than any genetics would be...
I was just speaking to this topic last night amongst a group of friends; and basically said pretty much the same thing - except that I feel that Amazon's choice significantly points to the failure of online retailing. Lack of profits, shopping agents, and fierce competition will only drive prices lower, making it less and less profitable to retail online.
The real money in e-commerce won't come from retail sales (though online sales are a nice supplement to real world sales), and it won't come from streamlining and integration of real world and online inventories (though that is a significant way to cut costs). The web is all about destroying middlemen, and retailers are the ultimate middlemen! Why not go to eBay and buy that new bestselling hardcover from a guy in Tulsa who just finished it for five bucks plus shipping?
No, the real money in E-commerce is going to come from the sale and analysis of DATA and information. The web is first and foremost a communications medium; it's greatest strength is its ability to send data back and forth... it's therefore a natural assumption that money should come from the sale and transfer of significant and valuable pieces of data.
The company I work for currently has two clients who are leveraging their databases onto the Internet, and we're designing databases and making convenient web-based search and reporting front-ends for their subscribers. These companies are going to get a hell of a lot of money from people using the same data source. Their only overhead will be maintaining the servers and databases - no inventory, or shipping costs, or anything.
Internet companies that sell services and information online are going to be the truly profitable e-commerce sites. The problem is, most people are still trapped in the "world of atoms", as Negroponte puts it. They're still trying to fit real world strategies into the online world, and when the balloon bursts and people realize it's not going to work that way, stock prices are going to crash really, really hard.
Slashdot Mirror
I received a settlement notice in the mail; I assume this is because I registered my warranty information with Iomega.
I suppose I can post more info if people want to see it, but it's about 10 pages of stuff. Maybe I'll scan it in...
Mike Caprio, mikecap@nospamworld.stdspam.com
Oh, of course we can't have direct elections, because then we'll have the tyranny of the majority. Oh, heaven forbid that majority should rule in a democracy.
What the argument fails to actually do is demonstrate whether the will of the people is better represented in direct elections or electoral college elections. What would really best serve everyone is to look at the way other nations represent their people - the U.S. is one of the few countries in the world with a two-party system. Instead of actually having parlimentary representation with multiple parties that actually reflect the will of the people, we have to funnel everything into two parties that can blatantly ignore issues that are brought up by folks like Nader.
If we had direct elections and had more parties, we'd have more choices, and we'd be able to get a better voice in government. In other countries, five different parties can win seats in a parliament, get proportional representation of the people's vote, and then the parliament actually has to work together and talk to each other to get consensus. Imagine being free of the gridlock caused by only having two parties that won't budge against each other!
ABOLISH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE; WE WANT DIRECT ELECTIONS
GIVE US MORE PARTIES; WE WANT MORE CHOICES
Mike Caprio, mikecap@nospamldbw.com
Can I sue resume spidering job boards that republish my resume without my permission?
Can I sue search engines? Do the results of crawlers and indexes count as republishing my content without my permission?
Mike Caprio, mikecap@nospamldbw.com
Here's the text of their email to me:
TransOrbital Offers the 1st Commercial Spaceflight to the Moon
A Project Participation Opportunity with a For-Profit Space Venture
Solicitation of Interest
Not only will the 2001 TrailBlazer Project be the first commercial spaceflight to the Moon; it will also return the first video from the Moon in thirty years. The video will be of very high quality and digitally enhanced, showing the lunar surface details as has never been seen before.
The entire Project is intended to cost a small fraction of what it would cost NASA to complete a similar project.
TransOrbital Inc. has developed a low-cost, video spacecraft project for lunar orbit. TransOrbital's commercially funded robotic spacecraft, 2001 TrailBlazer, will return HDTV video from lunar orbit for use as Internet content and other commercial products. The privately held company has already arranged for a launch aboard the "Strela" launch vehicle. The 2001 TrailBlazer Project is a for-profit Space Venture and will produce high-quality video and other products such as:
The photos from lunar orbit will be very high resolution, utilizing a telescope with an HDTV camera. "We expect to be able to see the tire tracks from the Apollo-era rovers."
Excellent Website and Portal Content
"We want to do for the Moon what Jacques Cousteau did for marine exploration, to go, to see, sell the images as content and repeat it again and again." The Project will provide exceptional long-term content for TransOrbital customers' Internet portals during construction of the spacecraft, the launch, and throughout the spaceflight to the Moon. This exciting Project can propel customers' portals to the forefront of the Web, as the premiere sites for content, education and news about space and the Moon. The spacecraft will also provide small cargo delivery service for relics and personal & business cards, to a hard landing on the lunar surface.
The Project will be fully insured against launch and technical failure, assuring the return of deposits in the event of disaster, a welcome feature incorporated into TransOrbital's business plan. TransOrbital is seeking additional associates and customers for products created during the 2001 TrailBlazer Project.
Point of Contact:
Gregory Nemitz
VP, TransOrbital, Inc.
3672-A Bancroft St.
San Diego, CA 92104
Tel: 619-528-0520
Fax: 619-693-3039
gnemitz@transorbital.net
http://www.transorbital.net
Mike Caprio, mikecap@nospamldbw.com
Mike Caprio, mikecap@nospamldbw.com
I've known plenty of people who "dumbed down" their behavior in order to become more accepted by a group. It makes sense to me that those aren't accepted might better spend their time learning instead of worrying about their popularity or appearance. Why does it always have to be their genes dictating their actions?
This article is just another misguided attempt to find some sort of "genetic root cause" for people's behavior. There may be people for whom this holds true, but I think environment is a much bigger factor than any genetics would be...
Mike Caprio, mikecap@nospamldbw.com
The real money in e-commerce won't come from retail sales (though online sales are a nice supplement to real world sales), and it won't come from streamlining and integration of real world and online inventories (though that is a significant way to cut costs). The web is all about destroying middlemen, and retailers are the ultimate middlemen! Why not go to eBay and buy that new bestselling hardcover from a guy in Tulsa who just finished it for five bucks plus shipping?
No, the real money in E-commerce is going to come from the sale and analysis of DATA and information. The web is first and foremost a communications medium; it's greatest strength is its ability to send data back and forth... it's therefore a natural assumption that money should come from the sale and transfer of significant and valuable pieces of data.
The company I work for currently has two clients who are leveraging their databases onto the Internet, and we're designing databases and making convenient web-based search and reporting front-ends for their subscribers. These companies are going to get a hell of a lot of money from people using the same data source. Their only overhead will be maintaining the servers and databases - no inventory, or shipping costs, or anything.
Internet companies that sell services and information online are going to be the truly profitable e-commerce sites. The problem is, most people are still trapped in the "world of atoms", as Negroponte puts it. They're still trying to fit real world strategies into the online world, and when the balloon bursts and people realize it's not going to work that way, stock prices are going to crash really, really hard.
Mike Caprio
When did that happen? What are the details?