Yeah, I get about the same - technically it's 7/768, but due to distance to router it is more like 6/.5. On the plus side, CenturyLink finally updated the ancient Qwest CO (like a month ago) to be able to carry faster traffic, probably because I think they are getting killed by 4G (both Sprint [formerly Clearwire], aka WiMax and 4G phone carriers). Comcast has offered high speed service in the area for about a decade, but they only seem economical with pay TV, and their pay TV is overpriced. I seriously plan to switch to a faster network soon, as I think their 25Mbit plan is actually cheaper than the old one I have now (to keep it competitive).
My telecom just rolled out 40Mbit service, about 10 years after Comcast did the same. I don't expect to see this any time soon unless Comcast uses it (they're Fiber-to-the-Neighborhood and then copper, so it's possible). I still won't do business with Comcast, even if I can basically make pricing a wash with bundling. I also could get a DirecTV bundle but giving up DISH would be hard, plus I don't give a rip about sports, which is kind of the focus of DirecTV.
Sigh... said it before, but most fourth generation designs including the one the US killed by John Kerry's ignorance burn nuclear waste as fuel. Russia continued, and their once through versions like the BN-600 burn 80% of their nuclear fuel and would burn nearly 100% if they used continuous reprocessing, but that is considered a proliferation risk. 80% - vs.5 to 5%.
In any case, one of the primary reasons nuclear experimentation was killed off was that it was corrupt and in the pocket of reactor owners - from the NRC site itself:
AEC to NRC
By 1974, the AEC's regulatory programs had come under such strong attack that Congress decided to abolish the agency. Supporters and critics of nuclear power agreed that the promotional and regulatory duties of the AEC should be assigned to different agencies. The Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 created the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; it began operations on January 19, 1975. The NRC (like the AEC before it) focused its attention on several broad issues that were essential to protecting public health and safety.
The NRC rubber stamps everything too, so not much has changed.
Actually including at least part of the American Civil War - specifically until the National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864 (the Civil War ended in 1865). Very close though - I doubt most people know that at all. Incidentally, there were numerous State banks until 1866 when further legislation taxed them to death (don't know a lot about these, but pretty sure they were unconstitutional, anyway).
While that may be a useful measurement for scientists, it isn't a very useful measurement for humans - a better one is about 1 in 142000 jumps (2010 numbers).
This is probably why one of my life insurance specifically prohibits skydiving and hang gliding (my work one has no prohibitions, but pays less money). It also prohibits SCUBA diving over (under?) 150ft, but I only recreational dive (less than 110ft).
The simple answer - both China and the US depend far too much on coal for electricity, and there is currently almost no control over CO2 emissions from these plants.
45% of US electricity is coal and about 23% after that the 1/3 less polluting natural gas (which can be derived from coal, but isn't), after that is 20% nuclear and the rest mostly "green" energy. The EPA has proposed forcing new coal plants to adopt carbon capture technology, but Republicans (and yes, I call out Republicans, some of this info is from their coddling "news" site) oppose it for various reasons, usually citing it is experimental, expensive, and poses safety risks. What they don't say is it is about 1/3 less efficient in generating electricity and therefore impacts their constituent's profits, since their constituents can't regulate their own rate hikes (such is the life of a regulated monopoly). Thus the EPA has to focus on the other 55%, much of which has already taken place (automobile emissions standards, industrial emission standards, etc).
I don't know Chinese numbers, but the fact that they mine almost 4x what the US does suggests they are far more dependent on coal.
I understand the purpose of your post, but IMO the light isn't so bright.
In regards to: * still practice slavery? Yes. Human trafficking is still a huge worldwide problem.
* stil have children working in mines? Yes, unfortunately, but less so than in the past. Same for child labor in general. Mostly a third world problem, but it happens in America, too, often due to human trafficking.
* still only allow men to vote? Yes still in many Muslim countries and maybe others.
* still horde science/technology/knowledge such as fire, computers etc or do we share it with others? Yes, thorough corporate secrets, patents, copyright, etc. In fact, when America was founded, patents and copyright were frowned upon and given small terms when allowed. Now these periods are mammoth and benefit corporate owners.
To be fair, America also had German and (non-citizen) Italian Internment camps during WW2, but since the German population was too large, they mainly expelled them from coastal areas and held about ~11000 people as opposed to the ~110000 Japanese. Unlike the Japanese or Italians, the German internees have never been given an apology or reparation, which IMO is a dick move on the part of America. I think America was a bit more restrained with German-Americans during WW2 because of what happened during WW1 (unconstitutionally banning the German language for starters, then registration cards, random roundups and imprisonments, killing pacifist draftees in prison, etc).
Pearl Harbor itself was masterfully orchestrated, but I think Roosevelt expected a different result. We had cracked their codes, knew an attack was coming and where. An aircraft carrier due in two days before suddenly develops engine trouble, fixes it and is supposed to arrive that morning, but is mysteriously hours late. I expect Roosevelt thought a bunch of planes (known to be scout vehicles) and a few small ships were not going to be able to take out the mighty battleships stationed there and expected an attack and an easy repulsion of Japanese with few casualties while instantly polarizing America to join in the war. In fact, Japan had declared war on America already (for refusal to sell oil to them), so an attack was hardly the "surprise" the US made it out to be. We knew an attack was coming and where, the question is, did we know when? Only Roosevelt and his top brass know that, and I'm sure they took it to their graves.
Well the debt ceiling forcing a default was a liberal lie (and as a moderate, I'll call you liberals out for lying just like conservatives) - it would be trivial to prioritize the small amount of debt repayment due monthly to avoid a default, and interest payments really are a trivial amount of the monthly budget. Credit rating may have been at risk, but really American livelihood was at stake. What would happen is treasury bonds that mature won't get paid, Social Security payments will drop significantly (because of debt owed to SS), numerous, primarily military projects under the discretionary fund (since these aren't mandatory and won't be prioritized for funding) would be shut down, etc. Liberals don't want to lose their precious Social Security, the elderly rich don't want to lose their T-Bonds, and conservatives don't want to lose their pet military programs. As someone that is not a fan of Social Security, debt, the polarizing of the classes, or big military, this sounds like win-win-win-win to me, but I think in most American't eyes it is lose-lose-(?)-lose. Polarizing of the classes is something the rich is for and the poor and maybe middle class are against.
As for the original comment, the movie focused WAY more on the bug war than the book did. But admittedly, focusing 3/4 of the movie about classes and talking probably wouldn't make a good movie.
In regards to yours, the movie actually parodies the political views in the book from what I recall.
As for the political views of Heinlein, his view is largely what brought Nazis to power in Germany - the belief that communism or fascism is inevitable, and fascism is preferred to communism. Jack London feared socialism or a plutocracy was inevitable for America in the early 1900s, and I think Heinlein's view is an evolution of that based on the rise of Communism (plutocracy is almost oligarchy, and oligarchy not far from fascism).
I've recently thought about what exactly was the "breaking point" of this and other movies I hated that other people love. Many of these movies I enjoyed until that point, but that point onward the movie was completely ruined for me. Some of these are pretty trivial, too. With Starship Troopers, it was bugs shooting ships in space out of their asses. With the Matrix, it was using people for electricity. With Independence Day, it was the completely unrealistic physics (I had the same problem with V, btw - those ships would literally crush the cities if they entered the atmosphere), With the Hobbit it was that ridiculously long and improbable mine car ride and the cartoonish goblins. With Avatar it was Unobtainium (floating rocks I'm fine with - it's an alien world, so magic is fine - that word is a total groaner).
heh - I consider myself moderate, but when I actually think about my political views, many are radical in the eyes of most Americans. They just are radical toward both conservative and liberal issues. I would never get support from either Democrat or Republican tickets if I ever ran for election.
My work's HR system requires an ActiveX control with our smart card system. To make things worse, this system barely supports IE7 (apparently IE8 in compatibility mode works, as well, but IE9+ absolutely does not) and they only upgraded it to support 7 because Microsoft stopped supporting IE6. I actually created a VM explicitly so I can log into the HR system (because I HAVE to have IE9 or higher for my other work, since I work in html 5 and need to test on most major browsers). My ops group thought it was odd that I requested key card software installed on a VM, but when I explained my situation they did it (in fact, they set up a lab machine specifically for others with similar circumstances).
Incidentally, nobody really uses IE except for the HR system, and everybody has an old version also because of the HR system. I believe the HR issue is money related and more related to SAP upgrade costs than key card (and I believe we paid SAP to integrate our key card access).
A national sales tax will not happen - it is unconstitutional and a right reserved for states. Collecting sales tax on behalf of the states has been proposed, but some states don't collect sales tax and again, it probably would be struck down as unconstitutional based on state's rights to collect the tax.
And the reason you get between 2000 and 19000+ jurisdictions (depending on who you ask) that change daily is because taxes need to be collected in the location of the buyer if the business doesn't have a presence in the state. That means you need to know state, county, and municipal taxes for every resident of the state. Any attempts to collect the tax in one location has been shot down because the rest of the state thinks it is getting robbed out of deserved taxes (but technically you'd still owe this tax and would be responsible for paying it, just like Sales and Use taxes today).
States have the right to request records of names and amounts of purchases made through catalog and internet sales to their state, and could easily be picking a few out of state vendors and nailing people for tax evasion. I don't think it would take many arrests and either fines or jail time to get massive amounts of people to pay taxes just because they're scared not to.
More specifically, the Constitution was meant as a framework, and as that it is relatively loose in its terminology and definitions, and doesn't really establish much law. The Bill of Rights (first 10 amendments that came about 15 years later) added most of that.
But we're talking NSA here, and their charter SPECIFICALLY forbids them from spying on Americans (with FISA/Patriot Act exception if they are talking with foreigners) intentionally or not, and they have been proven to be doing that. This is a felony in the US, and they should be held accountable.
I have serious problems with the illegal, warrantless spying as well as FISA being a secret supreme court that can, in fact, overrule the public supreme court. This is unacceptable. If it keeps going on, I feel I will have to rescind my citizenship and move elsewhere, because the US is moving toward being a police state. Having ancestors that were forcibly evicted (religious persecution) gives me options for a new homeland.
I probably didn't discover Mosaic until late 1994 and nobody had told me about it. I randomly downloaded and ran stuff from our ftp site, which had mirrors of stuff shared by most major universities. At first I was majorly disappointed to discover it was a web browser, having used a text based one in 1993 and pretty much scrap-heaped the technology (compared to gopher it was a huge leap back). Two things with Mosaic grabbed me, though - the content was graphical, and there was a View Source that showed how it was done. I was mildly intrigued, especially since the default page contained graphics. I created my own pages, adding more and more content and graphics using Photoshop, aligning pages with tables, and showing others how it was done. It was probably the only thing I did more than usenet while working my job, which was TA the worst shifts at the deadest labs because I was the noob. I usually got the 8 hour Saturday shifts, spending the first 4 on my homework and the rest trying not to go nuts from boredom.
While Mosaic was neat, the Netscape beta utterly blew me away. I told my dad to buy Netscape stock when they went public. He didn't. He regretted it later. I would have told him to sell the second Microsoft announced they were releasing a competing browser, because no matter how bad IE 1.0 was, I had watched Microsoft destroy too many companies with bundling agreements with PC hardware companies where they would get Windows and Office for hundreds of dollars less with a bundle (and probably if they excluded competing products) and I knew Netscape was doomed (WordPerfect and Spyglass in particular - that last one was a real dick move... we'll pay you a royalty for every copy sold... gives away for free and absorbs the expense by upping the price of Windows, then insists it's NOT part of the operating system, then later when they have their own code, insists it IS part of the operating system). My prophecy proved correct.
Also How much energy (as in fossil fuel) does it take to transport and the most important question: How much more will this all cost.
IMO, I don't see clean coal ever happening. It is too expensive - it would be cheaper to convert the coal plant to natural gas, which produces half the CO2, or oil which produces about 2/3. Or buy a 4th gen nuke plant from Russia* that produces zero.
*because we killed research on them here citing problems that only exist in second generation reactors and Russia didn't, and now have three up and running, one about to go critical, and another designed and going into production at Beloyarsk - keep in mind these are research reactors to find and fix problems and they have had issues (not ready for production yet, but close).
Most musicians don't get any money from recordings - in fact, in my experience we lost money making recordings. We got an advance that went entirely to studio time (no, the studios don't pay for it, the musicians do). The musician's cut (often 10-15% of post-tax earnings on an album for noobs) is used to pay off that advance. If I remember correctly, my band would have had to sell over 30000 albums just to pay back our studio time. We sold about half that, which is quite good for new bands I'm told. Unfortunately, our relations with the studio and stability as a band went south from there. Where I made money as a musician was on songwriting (15% of post-tax earnings) and as a studio musician (work for hire).
Speaking of works for hire, I for one would like to see a little pain for some of the major studios. EMI in particular, which declared all of their artists works as "works for hire" so the works never go back to the artist and are corporate owned forever.
You might be surprised how widespread nicotine is, as it is in every nightshade plant. You get small amounts in tomatoes, eggplant and potatoes. Sure it takes 20 pounds (9kg) of eggplant to get the same dose of nicotine as a single cig, but it's still there. I believe nicotine hooks on to the same receptors as cocaine and heroin, which makes it hard to quit, but I don't know if the drug itself causes health issues (certainly smoking it with a bunch of other crap does, but alone I have no idea).
Unless you're eating the depleted uranium, you probably aren't going to be affected by it. Skin is pretty good at stopping alpha and relatively good at stopping beta radiation (like that stuff you get from the sun). Stomach linings and lungs are not.
White Phosphorus is actually not specifically banned in any treaty except for use against civilian targets. It is used extensively in signaling (i.e. flares), tracer rounds, and to produce large amounts of smoke.
I work with about 1/3 of a company being female programmers, some didn't even get a college degree when they started (which started to be required after we were sold off to a large company). It also was started and run by a woman for many years before eventually sold off multiple times and now run by a man, though he was recently forced out and will be "retiring" at the end of the year with no replacement announced yet.
That said, I work with a lot of outsourced employees in India and China. In those countries, the ratio is almost 50-50 for male and female programmers that I work with. In my generation in America, it was nerdy to be a computer programmer, so women avoided it. I think that taboo is slowly ending, but it will be a few years before tech-savvy women that grew up in this generation get to college.
This is more like you having the complete works of William Shakespeare including four previously unknown plays and I happened to see it and quickly copy it taking phone snapshots of each page for the benefit of the public and then you accused me of stealing it and having me arrested for it. I didn't actually take anything from you, and the document was in the public domain, just not freely available.
Hmm... I had heard the documents were in the public domain, but MIT charged 10 cents a page to see them. Swartz wanted to make the public domain documents publicly available on the internet and not blocked by MIT's ivy wall and MIT went to find out what could be done to stop it. Someone (not sure who, prosecutors or the United States government) suggested using CFAA, which essentially makes terms of service a binding contract, and making these documents available on the internet violated that contract. They also got him for wire fraud, a provision put in for ATMs back when modems were considered a new technology, since he was stealing "financial transactions" that MIT could have made for these documents.
FISA applies to foreign surveillance and signed into law by Carter and was actually put in place because Nixon used federal resources to spy on domestic activities in violation of the Fourth Amendment. So the original intent was to make sure federal resources were only used for international spying. CFAA was put in place to prevent computer crimes such as hacking (the bad kind) and protect ATM transactions. Politicians had very little idea what (peer-to-peer) modems were, much less packet networks when they signed that into law, but it was pushed through quickly to protect banks and businesses as these technologies emerged.
So technically, FISA and CFAA have nothing to do with one another, though they could be intertwined today with FISA's broadened scope.
Swartz published PUBLIC DOMAIN documents on the internet that non-college students had to pay 10 cents a page for a copy. He was charged with computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and recklessly damaging a protected computer, all provisions of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, many of which were meant to protect ATM transactions before there was internet. If you haven't read this extremely over-broad law, which depending on interpretation makes the internet illegal (accessing any site without permission of the owner is illegal and a felony). In the aftermath, Aaron's law was proposed to eliminate terms of service from the CFAA, which is what all of these charges were based on.
For that he was looking at 35 years in prison, forfeit of assets, and a 1 million dollar fine. To put that in perspective, he was looking at spending over half of his life in prison and could be 61 by release (without parole) and completely broke. That was for making free knowledge available to the public. I can understand being depressed and possibly suicidal faced with those charges and the very likely possibility of losing in court.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I get about the same - technically it's 7/768, but due to distance to router it is more like 6/.5. On the plus side, CenturyLink finally updated the ancient Qwest CO (like a month ago) to be able to carry faster traffic, probably because I think they are getting killed by 4G (both Sprint [formerly Clearwire], aka WiMax and 4G phone carriers). Comcast has offered high speed service in the area for about a decade, but they only seem economical with pay TV, and their pay TV is overpriced. I seriously plan to switch to a faster network soon, as I think their 25Mbit plan is actually cheaper than the old one I have now (to keep it competitive).
My telecom just rolled out 40Mbit service, about 10 years after Comcast did the same. I don't expect to see this any time soon unless Comcast uses it (they're Fiber-to-the-Neighborhood and then copper, so it's possible). I still won't do business with Comcast, even if I can basically make pricing a wash with bundling. I also could get a DirecTV bundle but giving up DISH would be hard, plus I don't give a rip about sports, which is kind of the focus of DirecTV.
Sigh... said it before, but most fourth generation designs including the one the US killed by John Kerry's ignorance burn nuclear waste as fuel. Russia continued, and their once through versions like the BN-600 burn 80% of their nuclear fuel and would burn nearly 100% if they used continuous reprocessing, but that is considered a proliferation risk. 80% - vs .5 to 5%.
In any case, one of the primary reasons nuclear experimentation was killed off was that it was corrupt and in the pocket of reactor owners - from the NRC site itself:
The NRC rubber stamps everything too, so not much has changed.
Actually including at least part of the American Civil War - specifically until the National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864 (the Civil War ended in 1865). Very close though - I doubt most people know that at all. Incidentally, there were numerous State banks until 1866 when further legislation taxed them to death (don't know a lot about these, but pretty sure they were unconstitutional, anyway).
While that may be a useful measurement for scientists, it isn't a very useful measurement for humans - a better one is about 1 in 142000 jumps (2010 numbers).
This is probably why one of my life insurance specifically prohibits skydiving and hang gliding (my work one has no prohibitions, but pays less money). It also prohibits SCUBA diving over (under?) 150ft, but I only recreational dive (less than 110ft).
The simple answer - both China and the US depend far too much on coal for electricity, and there is currently almost no control over CO2 emissions from these plants.
45% of US electricity is coal and about 23% after that the 1/3 less polluting natural gas (which can be derived from coal, but isn't), after that is 20% nuclear and the rest mostly "green" energy. The EPA has proposed forcing new coal plants to adopt carbon capture technology, but Republicans (and yes, I call out Republicans, some of this info is from their coddling "news" site) oppose it for various reasons, usually citing it is experimental, expensive, and poses safety risks. What they don't say is it is about 1/3 less efficient in generating electricity and therefore impacts their constituent's profits, since their constituents can't regulate their own rate hikes (such is the life of a regulated monopoly). Thus the EPA has to focus on the other 55%, much of which has already taken place (automobile emissions standards, industrial emission standards, etc).
I don't know Chinese numbers, but the fact that they mine almost 4x what the US does suggests they are far more dependent on coal.
I understand the purpose of your post, but IMO the light isn't so bright.
In regards to:
* still practice slavery?
Yes. Human trafficking is still a huge worldwide problem.
* stil have children working in mines?
Yes, unfortunately, but less so than in the past. Same for child labor in general. Mostly a third world problem, but it happens in America, too, often due to human trafficking.
* still only allow men to vote?
Yes still in many Muslim countries and maybe others.
* still horde science/technology/knowledge such as fire, computers etc or do we share it with others?
Yes, thorough corporate secrets, patents, copyright, etc. In fact, when America was founded, patents and copyright were frowned upon and given small terms when allowed. Now these periods are mammoth and benefit corporate owners.
To be fair, America also had German and (non-citizen) Italian Internment camps during WW2, but since the German population was too large, they mainly expelled them from coastal areas and held about ~11000 people as opposed to the ~110000 Japanese. Unlike the Japanese or Italians, the German internees have never been given an apology or reparation, which IMO is a dick move on the part of America. I think America was a bit more restrained with German-Americans during WW2 because of what happened during WW1 (unconstitutionally banning the German language for starters, then registration cards, random roundups and imprisonments, killing pacifist draftees in prison, etc).
Pearl Harbor itself was masterfully orchestrated, but I think Roosevelt expected a different result. We had cracked their codes, knew an attack was coming and where. An aircraft carrier due in two days before suddenly develops engine trouble, fixes it and is supposed to arrive that morning, but is mysteriously hours late. I expect Roosevelt thought a bunch of planes (known to be scout vehicles) and a few small ships were not going to be able to take out the mighty battleships stationed there and expected an attack and an easy repulsion of Japanese with few casualties while instantly polarizing America to join in the war. In fact, Japan had declared war on America already (for refusal to sell oil to them), so an attack was hardly the "surprise" the US made it out to be. We knew an attack was coming and where, the question is, did we know when? Only Roosevelt and his top brass know that, and I'm sure they took it to their graves.
Well the debt ceiling forcing a default was a liberal lie (and as a moderate, I'll call you liberals out for lying just like conservatives) - it would be trivial to prioritize the small amount of debt repayment due monthly to avoid a default, and interest payments really are a trivial amount of the monthly budget. Credit rating may have been at risk, but really American livelihood was at stake. What would happen is treasury bonds that mature won't get paid, Social Security payments will drop significantly (because of debt owed to SS), numerous, primarily military projects under the discretionary fund (since these aren't mandatory and won't be prioritized for funding) would be shut down, etc. Liberals don't want to lose their precious Social Security, the elderly rich don't want to lose their T-Bonds, and conservatives don't want to lose their pet military programs. As someone that is not a fan of Social Security, debt, the polarizing of the classes, or big military, this sounds like win-win-win-win to me, but I think in most American't eyes it is lose-lose-(?)-lose. Polarizing of the classes is something the rich is for and the poor and maybe middle class are against.
As for the original comment, the movie focused WAY more on the bug war than the book did. But admittedly, focusing 3/4 of the movie about classes and talking probably wouldn't make a good movie.
In regards to yours, the movie actually parodies the political views in the book from what I recall.
As for the political views of Heinlein, his view is largely what brought Nazis to power in Germany - the belief that communism or fascism is inevitable, and fascism is preferred to communism. Jack London feared socialism or a plutocracy was inevitable for America in the early 1900s, and I think Heinlein's view is an evolution of that based on the rise of Communism (plutocracy is almost oligarchy, and oligarchy not far from fascism).
I've recently thought about what exactly was the "breaking point" of this and other movies I hated that other people love. Many of these movies I enjoyed until that point, but that point onward the movie was completely ruined for me. Some of these are pretty trivial, too. With Starship Troopers, it was bugs shooting ships in space out of their asses. With the Matrix, it was using people for electricity. With Independence Day, it was the completely unrealistic physics (I had the same problem with V, btw - those ships would literally crush the cities if they entered the atmosphere), With the Hobbit it was that ridiculously long and improbable mine car ride and the cartoonish goblins. With Avatar it was Unobtainium (floating rocks I'm fine with - it's an alien world, so magic is fine - that word is a total groaner).
heh - I consider myself moderate, but when I actually think about my political views, many are radical in the eyes of most Americans. They just are radical toward both conservative and liberal issues. I would never get support from either Democrat or Republican tickets if I ever ran for election.
My work's HR system requires an ActiveX control with our smart card system. To make things worse, this system barely supports IE7 (apparently IE8 in compatibility mode works, as well, but IE9+ absolutely does not) and they only upgraded it to support 7 because Microsoft stopped supporting IE6. I actually created a VM explicitly so I can log into the HR system (because I HAVE to have IE9 or higher for my other work, since I work in html 5 and need to test on most major browsers). My ops group thought it was odd that I requested key card software installed on a VM, but when I explained my situation they did it (in fact, they set up a lab machine specifically for others with similar circumstances).
Incidentally, nobody really uses IE except for the HR system, and everybody has an old version also because of the HR system. I believe the HR issue is money related and more related to SAP upgrade costs than key card (and I believe we paid SAP to integrate our key card access).
A national sales tax will not happen - it is unconstitutional and a right reserved for states. Collecting sales tax on behalf of the states has been proposed, but some states don't collect sales tax and again, it probably would be struck down as unconstitutional based on state's rights to collect the tax.
And the reason you get between 2000 and 19000+ jurisdictions (depending on who you ask) that change daily is because taxes need to be collected in the location of the buyer if the business doesn't have a presence in the state. That means you need to know state, county, and municipal taxes for every resident of the state. Any attempts to collect the tax in one location has been shot down because the rest of the state thinks it is getting robbed out of deserved taxes (but technically you'd still owe this tax and would be responsible for paying it, just like Sales and Use taxes today).
States have the right to request records of names and amounts of purchases made through catalog and internet sales to their state, and could easily be picking a few out of state vendors and nailing people for tax evasion. I don't think it would take many arrests and either fines or jail time to get massive amounts of people to pay taxes just because they're scared not to.
Gizmodo article on it from earlier this year.
More specifically, the Constitution was meant as a framework, and as that it is relatively loose in its terminology and definitions, and doesn't really establish much law. The Bill of Rights (first 10 amendments that came about 15 years later) added most of that.
But we're talking NSA here, and their charter SPECIFICALLY forbids them from spying on Americans (with FISA/Patriot Act exception if they are talking with foreigners) intentionally or not, and they have been proven to be doing that. This is a felony in the US, and they should be held accountable.
I have serious problems with the illegal, warrantless spying as well as FISA being a secret supreme court that can, in fact, overrule the public supreme court. This is unacceptable. If it keeps going on, I feel I will have to rescind my citizenship and move elsewhere, because the US is moving toward being a police state. Having ancestors that were forcibly evicted (religious persecution) gives me options for a new homeland.
For me it was gradual...
I probably didn't discover Mosaic until late 1994 and nobody had told me about it. I randomly downloaded and ran stuff from our ftp site, which had mirrors of stuff shared by most major universities. At first I was majorly disappointed to discover it was a web browser, having used a text based one in 1993 and pretty much scrap-heaped the technology (compared to gopher it was a huge leap back). Two things with Mosaic grabbed me, though - the content was graphical, and there was a View Source that showed how it was done. I was mildly intrigued, especially since the default page contained graphics. I created my own pages, adding more and more content and graphics using Photoshop, aligning pages with tables, and showing others how it was done. It was probably the only thing I did more than usenet while working my job, which was TA the worst shifts at the deadest labs because I was the noob. I usually got the 8 hour Saturday shifts, spending the first 4 on my homework and the rest trying not to go nuts from boredom.
While Mosaic was neat, the Netscape beta utterly blew me away. I told my dad to buy Netscape stock when they went public. He didn't. He regretted it later. I would have told him to sell the second Microsoft announced they were releasing a competing browser, because no matter how bad IE 1.0 was, I had watched Microsoft destroy too many companies with bundling agreements with PC hardware companies where they would get Windows and Office for hundreds of dollars less with a bundle (and probably if they excluded competing products) and I knew Netscape was doomed (WordPerfect and Spyglass in particular - that last one was a real dick move... we'll pay you a royalty for every copy sold... gives away for free and absorbs the expense by upping the price of Windows, then insists it's NOT part of the operating system, then later when they have their own code, insists it IS part of the operating system). My prophecy proved correct.
Also
How much energy (as in fossil fuel) does it take to transport
and the most important question:
How much more will this all cost.
IMO, I don't see clean coal ever happening. It is too expensive - it would be cheaper to convert the coal plant to natural gas, which produces half the CO2, or oil which produces about 2/3. Or buy a 4th gen nuke plant from Russia* that produces zero.
*because we killed research on them here citing problems that only exist in second generation reactors and Russia didn't, and now have three up and running, one about to go critical, and another designed and going into production at Beloyarsk - keep in mind these are research reactors to find and fix problems and they have had issues (not ready for production yet, but close).
Most musicians don't get any money from recordings - in fact, in my experience we lost money making recordings. We got an advance that went entirely to studio time (no, the studios don't pay for it, the musicians do). The musician's cut (often 10-15% of post-tax earnings on an album for noobs) is used to pay off that advance. If I remember correctly, my band would have had to sell over 30000 albums just to pay back our studio time. We sold about half that, which is quite good for new bands I'm told. Unfortunately, our relations with the studio and stability as a band went south from there. Where I made money as a musician was on songwriting (15% of post-tax earnings) and as a studio musician (work for hire).
Speaking of works for hire, I for one would like to see a little pain for some of the major studios. EMI in particular, which declared all of their artists works as "works for hire" so the works never go back to the artist and are corporate owned forever.
You might be surprised how widespread nicotine is, as it is in every nightshade plant. You get small amounts in tomatoes, eggplant and potatoes. Sure it takes 20 pounds (9kg) of eggplant to get the same dose of nicotine as a single cig, but it's still there. I believe nicotine hooks on to the same receptors as cocaine and heroin, which makes it hard to quit, but I don't know if the drug itself causes health issues (certainly smoking it with a bunch of other crap does, but alone I have no idea).
Unless you're eating the depleted uranium, you probably aren't going to be affected by it. Skin is pretty good at stopping alpha and relatively good at stopping beta radiation (like that stuff you get from the sun). Stomach linings and lungs are not.
White Phosphorus is actually not specifically banned in any treaty except for use against civilian targets. It is used extensively in signaling (i.e. flares), tracer rounds, and to produce large amounts of smoke.
I work with about 1/3 of a company being female programmers, some didn't even get a college degree when they started (which started to be required after we were sold off to a large company). It also was started and run by a woman for many years before eventually sold off multiple times and now run by a man, though he was recently forced out and will be "retiring" at the end of the year with no replacement announced yet.
That said, I work with a lot of outsourced employees in India and China. In those countries, the ratio is almost 50-50 for male and female programmers that I work with. In my generation in America, it was nerdy to be a computer programmer, so women avoided it. I think that taboo is slowly ending, but it will be a few years before tech-savvy women that grew up in this generation get to college.
This is more like you having the complete works of William Shakespeare including four previously unknown plays and I happened to see it and quickly copy it taking phone snapshots of each page for the benefit of the public and then you accused me of stealing it and having me arrested for it. I didn't actually take anything from you, and the document was in the public domain, just not freely available.
Hmm... I had heard the documents were in the public domain, but MIT charged 10 cents a page to see them. Swartz wanted to make the public domain documents publicly available on the internet and not blocked by MIT's ivy wall and MIT went to find out what could be done to stop it. Someone (not sure who, prosecutors or the United States government) suggested using CFAA, which essentially makes terms of service a binding contract, and making these documents available on the internet violated that contract. They also got him for wire fraud, a provision put in for ATMs back when modems were considered a new technology, since he was stealing "financial transactions" that MIT could have made for these documents.
FISA applies to foreign surveillance and signed into law by Carter and was actually put in place because Nixon used federal resources to spy on domestic activities in violation of the Fourth Amendment. So the original intent was to make sure federal resources were only used for international spying. CFAA was put in place to prevent computer crimes such as hacking (the bad kind) and protect ATM transactions. Politicians had very little idea what (peer-to-peer) modems were, much less packet networks when they signed that into law, but it was pushed through quickly to protect banks and businesses as these technologies emerged.
So technically, FISA and CFAA have nothing to do with one another, though they could be intertwined today with FISA's broadened scope.
Swartz published PUBLIC DOMAIN documents on the internet that non-college students had to pay 10 cents a page for a copy. He was charged with computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and recklessly damaging a protected computer, all provisions of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, many of which were meant to protect ATM transactions before there was internet. If you haven't read this extremely over-broad law, which depending on interpretation makes the internet illegal (accessing any site without permission of the owner is illegal and a felony). In the aftermath, Aaron's law was proposed to eliminate terms of service from the CFAA, which is what all of these charges were based on.
For that he was looking at 35 years in prison, forfeit of assets, and a 1 million dollar fine. To put that in perspective, he was looking at spending over half of his life in prison and could be 61 by release (without parole) and completely broke. That was for making free knowledge available to the public. I can understand being depressed and possibly suicidal faced with those charges and the very likely possibility of losing in court.