The article states that only 1% of terrestrial plants can grow in such conditions and it names exactly one crop that might, theoretically, be valuable for its oil. Wow. That's a pretty slim basis on which to try to feed humanity.
I live in the southeastern USA and have more oak trees in my yard than I would like. I hate them with a passion, but that's another story. I have not noticed any difference in the number of acorns in my yard over previous years and they seem to be the same size as normal. Maybe this botanist is just observing some sort of local phenomena.
Regarding Stevens, it's good to finally be rid of the embarrassment... too bad we're replacing him with someone who is equally corrupt - only instead of belonging to big oil, Begich belongs to organized crime.
But then, corruption is a requirement to be in politics in the United States, so I guess Begich arrives well qualified.
Well, there are people who get pleasure out of being beaten and whipped, so I guess it figures that someone might actually like AIX. I used to work with it on a former job and let me tell you it was one happy day for me when we stopped using AIX and starting using Solaris and Linux instead. AIX isn't the worst Unix-like OS I've ever seen, but it's certainly nothing great either. It's best feature, LVM, is now in Linux anyway. I can honestly say that when looking for jobs I have shied away from AIX shops as I just don't want to do that kind of work anymore unless I don't have a choice. AIX skills really aren't applicable on other OSes, so that job ended up with a bunch of competent AIX admins who were useless on other platforms as they never worked with anything else.
Re:Nope, sorry
on
Ender in Exile
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Much as I enjoyed the Ender series, Scott Card has revealed himself to be a massive douche. I'm not buying or reading his books anymore.
Go to the article you listed and notice that the first highlighted section says "mortal enemy" in it. If you go to the article it links to that was written by Card, this paragraph is not to be found in it. Could it be a case of someone distorting what he said? Hmm...
Card is not a favorite here because
1) He's against gay marriage.
2) He's one of the very few popular writers who admits (gasp!) to being a Christian.
3) He's not a flaming liberal.
Nero has various tools that might be useful. I'm not really into this sort of thing as the people who are into it are generally off the deep end and take it way too seriously. The CD-R Freaks website might have some people who have helpful suggestions.
I have CD-Rs that are 7 years old that still work. In fact, I've never found a failure. You might consider using PAR to make PAR2 files for your CD-Rs so you can recover the data if it's important to you. You'll need to make those PAR2 files at the time of burn. And I would very strongly suggest that you ONLY use Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden media and consider every other brand to be suspect.
Aside from stereotyping russians, you guys are showing a lot of cultural bias, that you probably don't realise. Stop calling people lazy, and go read The Importance of Living.
I have spent a significant amount of time in Ukraine (rough comparison - Ukraine is to Russia as Canada is to the USA) and I have also known Russians in various places. I would not describe them as lazy. However, they do have a sense of entitlement that you cannot believe unless you have been there. Couple this with a seriously decreased sense of morality (thank you USSR!) and you do have a culture that sees nothing wrong at all with stealing, lying, killing, etc. to make money. I'm not saying all Russians are like this, but more are than we should really be comfortable with. Generally they are well educated and often well motivated, but they are not motivated in a way that's really beneficial to them or us in the long term. Ultimately they probably won't be able to solve the problems that they'll face in the near future (declining population, increasing rates of AIDS, poor health care, rampant alcoholism, etc.) because they are so self-centered. But they aren't lazy.
This is just my opinion on the guy. You're all free to agree or disagree.
Back in the late 80s I knew a guy who (at the time) had a job in the comics industry. Some of you might remember that some Bloom County strips featured a heavy metal band called Death Tongue. After a short period of time, it became Billy and the Boingers. Why? My friend told me that Breathed "got some complaints about the name Death Tongue" so he changed it. My personal take on this is that it sure didn't take much, just a few reader complaints, to make Breathed completely cave in.
He made this really big deal when he stopped Bloom County and started Outland that nobody from Bloom County would ever appear in it. His central character was Ronald-Ann, the worst character in his Bloom County strip. I'm sure the syndicate told him that his strip sucked and he better fix it, so in comes Opus to the rescue, followed by Bill the Cat and others.
Integrity? Well, Breathed has always caved in when given a choice, so you can make up your own mind about whether he has integrity or not.
Breathed's post Bloom County work sucks. Big time. Read it. Most of you will agree with me.
Even better, look on your favorite search engine for some interviews with him. He is one very strange dude. I don't mean eccentric. The word "eccentric" doesn't even begin to describe him. Think of crazy weird or scary weird and you will know what he's like. Again, just look for and read the interviews and decide if you really think he's somebody anyone should pay any attention to or care what he thinks.
Yes, there are various freeware and commercial products that let you rip and copy DVDs. I would point you at some websites, but I'm afraid of the Slashdot Effect causing them problems.
DVD Decrypter hasn't been updated in years because it's author was given a choice between facing a very expensive lawsuit or turning over the code and stopping work on it. He chose the latter. DVD Decrypter works fine on most DVDs, but not all.
AnyDVD is a commercial ripper that works on all DVDs and is updated regularly.
DVDFab HD Decrypter is a commercial ripper that works on all DVDs and is updated regularly. There is a free version available, but it may not be very useful to novices.
Once you rip a DVD, various programs can be used to burn it. One of the best is ImgBurn, which is freeware.
I know it goes against the norm, but I actually read the article. It clearly states that the drivers in this program must play a very specific game designed to improve visual alertness. So if you thought that Allstate (the "insurers" in this article) was going to give discounts to WOW players, think again.
My 12-yr-old has an email under our ISP account that I can monitor and it barely matters. Email is what her Mum & Dad use. Instead, she's obsessed with IM ("MSN" is what she calls it), facebook & MySpace. *That's* what keeps me awake at night.
I don't want to give a lot of personal details, but my sibling has 3 kids and this is definitely the biggest worry they have. The oldest is in college now and the youngest is in middle school and there's no real worries there. The middle child has been a My Space addict. He just could not live without it and spent probably 2+ hours each day on it. Even though My Space wasn't supposed to allow kids under 15 to have pages, he and his friends signed up for accounts and said their age was 99 years old. My Space said "Thank you sir!" and created the accounts.
I'd agree with the others who say that young kids don't need their own email accounts. Only my sibling's oldest child has one as far as I know.
IM, Facebook, My Space and "texting" (ugly Americanism for what the rest of the world calls SMS) are bigger worries. My nephew who is the My Space addict also managed to run up over $200 in texting charges one month and that kind of nonsense is quite common among parents of kids these days. I had a co-worker whose son did the same thing and I've heard of much worse than that. Downloading MP3 files is also a big worry and again, it's a problem with the middle child here. I was asked to have a talk with him by his parents on the foolishness of doing this and I could tell by the expression on his face that he wasn't really all that keen on hearing what I had to say and how he thinks that I Just Don't Get It.
The only thing that saves him is that he doesn't listen to anybody on a major label, so the RIAA is unlikely to be looking for any of the stuff he likes. I can personally attest to the fact that I've had to put on my security hat and clean up the family PC that he got infected with a virus from careless MP3 downloading. All of these are bigger worries than email.
I've posted on this before. The US program is designed to give the illusion that the patent office is really and truly trying to reform while in reality nothing changes. I'm too lazy to look up the last article on Slashdot about the US project, but if you crunch the numbers it's clear that fewer than 1% of submitted patents are even eligible for the program at all. A handful of patents will be rejected because of it, yes, but by and large the US patent office continues its work to let businesses patent everything possible.
Better for the kid to learn now that "free speech" is (and always has been) a crock of shit in the U.S.
Once again, another liberal nut job fails to understand that no rights are absolute. Tell ya what. Let me put it in terms you can understand.
Let's say that through some social engineering that I find out your real name, address and social security number. Then I create a web page and simply post this information. I do nothing else. I just post it. All of it is factual. Then when your life gets ruined by identity theft and you want to send me to jail, I say "You can't. I have freedom of speech. I told the truth and I did not in any way ask anyone to take your identity. You have to suck it up. Freedom of speech and all that." So tell me dear sir, would then just happily go away because, dang it, there's nothing you can do about it? After all, free speech is absolute and has no limits.
Big deal. I'd say that 99% of Usenet users use it for the binary groups and they pay to get those through a provider that carries them. The non-binary groups have mostly been worthless for a long time now and that's all Comcast and similar providers carried. Those who can't live without comp.lang.perl or whatever can pay to get it, if they wish, through one of many providers so it's not like it's impossible to get Usenet now.
For those who don't know, during the last season of his TV show "Seinfeld", Jerry Seinfeld was offered $200 million US ($100 per season) for 2 final seasons of the show. He turned it down. Since the show ended, Jerry has used his voice in one animated movie, done a few American Express commercials and a few TV appearances. I think it's pretty safe to assume that Jerry Seinfeld is rich and that if you are going to get him to work for you, it's going to be expensive.
So we can assume that getting him for the commercials wasn't cheap. Now the Microsoft shill tells us that this was "not unexpected" that the commercials failed. I guess the meetings on the spots went something like this:
Ad agency: Yeah, these ads are going to cost a lot of money because Jerry Seinfeld is probably the most expensive guy you can get for an ad. And preliminary test audiences have shown us that 60% hate the ads and 70% don't understand the point of them.
Microsoft: Sign us up now!
Just gives a whole new meaning to "clueless" when it comes to Microsoft. Maybe it would have been better to have just said "Look, we knew the ads were quirky, but we hoped they would catch on" rather than saying essentially "We knew most likely it would fail but we spent the money anyway because we are idiots and our shareholders won't hold us accountable".
So more than 467,000 patents were filed in 2007. Let's just call it 467,000 to simplify the math.
74 patents were submitted to the program. So that means that 1 out of every 6310 patents were submitted to this program. As I have said before, this whole program is a scam designed to convince the complainers that the patent office is "doing something" about the "patent problem". b
I used to work for the US government at one time and I can promise you all that they will never, never, never do anything to cut their funding and lowering the number of patents would cut their funding. They will instead set up bogus programs like this that will catch a few bad patents, which they will then hold up as examples that things are changing for the better. It's all smoke and mirrors.
I can speak and read Russian reasonably well and I have a few friends who live in Ukraine and Russia. I live in the USA. I can send SMS to any of my friends in Ukraine, but only some of them can send SMS back to me. I don't remember which one, but one of the two biggest mobile phone companies in Ukraine simply does not allow their customers to send SMS to the USA. The other one does allow it. Again, incoming SMS is no problem.
In Russia, I have a friend with the opposite problem. She can send SMS to me with no problem, but I cannot send SMS to her. Basically T-Mobile (my provider) says that her company (Megafon) has problems accepting SMS from T-Mobile and they (Megafon) aren't interested in fixing it. T-Mobile says it is an issue Megafon has to fix. So the only way that I could send SMS to my friend was to use Megafon's website which allows you to send SMS via the web to their customers.
Note that this has all been true for years and has nothing to do with the Georgia-Russia situation. Ukraine has excellent relations with the USA and nobody knows why one of their major mobile phone providers refuses to allow its customers to send SMS to the USA while the other one has no such restrictions, but that's how it is. A wise man once said "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" or something like that.
You forget the main reason the tools and the crime exists in Russia:
- a weak, corrupt legal system.
Russians (and quite a few people in the other states of the ex-USSR) have a weird sense of entitlement that causes them to believe that it's perfectly acceptable to steal from the rich. They suffered under communism for so long that it's quite all right to get some payback by stealing from the West now.
Since Russian law really doesn't care about crimes that are committed outside of Russia against non-Russians and anyway you can just bribe a judge to get whatever ruling you want, there really is no stopping these people. Well, I can think of ways to stop them, but let's just say that I don't think the USA or the EU has the stomach for what it would take. The weak legal system argument probably applies to China too.
Okay, so they include a 6x glas sphere. How nice, but you need a 500x microscope to read it. The sphere has a large base and it can be opened. Why not include the tool to read the document with the document?
You're expecting an awful lot for something that cost only $25,000 each copy to produce.:-) That's the real cost of each disc/globe configuration according to the article.
1. Polling place has paper ballots, BUT...
a. Nobody who works there knows how to use them because it's been too many years since they had to do it.
b. There aren't enough devices (pens, pencils, whatever) to use for voting because they weren't supposed to have to do this.
c. Lengthy lines caused by chaos make many people just give up and go home without voting.
d. Candidate that you wanted to win loses because of c (you didn't expect that, did you?)
2. Federal government takes a VERY dim view of how you "disenfranchised" voters and created a very big mess that they now have to deal with every election by placing armed guards in the polling places to prevent repeats from jerks like you.
Your reward? Years in a federal pen, with Bubba to make sweet, sweet love to you every night whether you want it or not.
3. Lack of sympathy from all parties who hear about it. Perception of you as a lunatic who could have just "tried to explain to the state government about the problems instead of taking the law into his own hands". Loss of your job.
Maybe also as a free bonus you pick up a nice disease like, I don't know, AIDS, from Bubba (see point #2 above.).
Please let us know when and were you will be doing this so we can watch as you destroy your life to make a point. Otherwise, shut up talking smack about stuff you are never going to do.
As a voter you have every right to vote against incumbents if you wish. Making term limits a law simply covers up for the fact that most voters don't pay attention. Forcing them to choose someone new doesn't really address that. Making them have to suffer with the person they put in office until the next election does teach a lesson that sometimes gets learned. Term limits will require a constitutional amendment and I suppose I don't have to lecture you on the odds of that happening (not good, in case you don't know).
As usual on Slashdot, what the submitter says happened and what the article says happened aren't the same.
According to the article:
A fire broke out on the 2nd floor of the subject's home. In the process of responding to this, firefighters found a LOT of chemicals, about 1500 different ones to be exact. The home was not zoned to be a chemical lab, so doing so much chemical work there violated zoning laws.
So while it's quite fun to blame "evil" governments, had a fire not broken out nothing would have happened. And nobody who's railing about the government seems to have any smart ideas on how a home user is going to properly dispose of chemical waste in a legal and environmentally sound way. For all we know he was just dumping stuff down the toilet, which probably isn't legal.
wait until you see the singapore or korean parliament footages. circus doesnt describe it.
You mean Taiwan, not Singapore. Of course if you actually knew anything about either of these countries you would know why such behavior would not happen in Singapore (hint - when you live in a one party system there's not really anybody to argue with).
Any lawyers know if there are any countries which would absolutely refuse extradition?
Typically countries refuse extradition for their citizens only. France will not extradite its citizens, nor will Brazil. In fact, Great Train robber Ronnie Biggs moved to Brazil and became a citizen before anybody in the UK knew where he was (this was decades ago) and when they asked Brazil to extradite him, they were told basically "It sucks to be you".
EU countries will not extradite foreign citizens to face the death penalty, nor will Canada under most circumstances, but that doesn't apply here.
Cuba would be a good bet as Cuba typically won't extradite anybody back to the USA for any reason.
Fugitive financier Robert Vesco lived there for decades safe from US law until he died late last year.
Slashdot Mirror
The article states that only 1% of terrestrial plants can grow in such conditions and it names exactly one crop that might, theoretically, be valuable for its oil. Wow. That's a pretty slim basis on which to try to feed humanity.
I live in the southeastern USA and have more oak trees in my yard than I would like. I hate them with a passion, but that's another story. I have not noticed any difference in the number of acorns in my yard over previous years and they seem to be the same size as normal. Maybe this botanist is just observing some sort of local phenomena.
Regarding Stevens, it's good to finally be rid of the embarrassment... too bad we're replacing him with someone who is equally corrupt - only instead of belonging to big oil, Begich belongs to organized crime.
But then, corruption is a requirement to be in politics in the United States, so I guess Begich arrives well qualified.
Welcome to Alaska, the new Louisiana.
Well, there are people who get pleasure out of being beaten and whipped, so I guess it figures that someone might actually like AIX. I used to work with it on a former job and let me tell you it was one happy day for me when we stopped using AIX and starting using Solaris and Linux instead. AIX isn't the worst Unix-like OS I've ever seen, but it's certainly nothing great either. It's best feature, LVM, is now in Linux anyway. I can honestly say that when looking for jobs I have shied away from AIX shops as I just don't want to do that kind of work anymore unless I don't have a choice. AIX skills really aren't applicable on other OSes, so that job ended up with a bunch of competent AIX admins who were useless on other platforms as they never worked with anything else.
Much as I enjoyed the Ender series, Scott Card has revealed himself to be a massive douche. I'm not buying or reading his books anymore.
Go to the article you listed and notice that the first highlighted section says "mortal enemy" in it. If you go to the article it links to that was written by Card, this paragraph is not to be found in it. Could it be a case of someone distorting what he said? Hmm...
Card is not a favorite here because
1) He's against gay marriage.
2) He's one of the very few popular writers who admits (gasp!) to being a Christian.
3) He's not a flaming liberal.
Nero has various tools that might be useful. I'm not really into this sort of thing as the people who are into it are generally off the deep end and take it way too seriously. The CD-R Freaks website might have some people who have helpful suggestions.
I have CD-Rs that are 7 years old that still work. In fact, I've never found a failure. You might consider using PAR to make PAR2 files for your CD-Rs so you can recover the data if it's important to you. You'll need to make those PAR2 files at the time of burn. And I would very strongly suggest that you ONLY use Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden media and consider every other brand to be suspect.
Aside from stereotyping russians, you guys are showing a lot of cultural bias, that you probably don't realise. Stop calling people lazy, and go read The Importance of Living.
I have spent a significant amount of time in Ukraine (rough comparison - Ukraine is to Russia as Canada is to the USA) and I have also known Russians in various places. I would not describe them as lazy. However, they do have a sense of entitlement that you cannot believe unless you have been there. Couple this with a seriously decreased sense of morality (thank you USSR!) and you do have a culture that sees nothing wrong at all with stealing, lying, killing, etc. to make money. I'm not saying all Russians are like this, but more are than we should really be comfortable with. Generally they are well educated and often well motivated, but they are not motivated in a way that's really beneficial to them or us in the long term. Ultimately they probably won't be able to solve the problems that they'll face in the near future (declining population, increasing rates of AIDS, poor health care, rampant alcoholism, etc.) because they are so self-centered. But they aren't lazy.
The linked article is already Slashdotted due to "exceeding bandwidth" or some such thing. No surprise there as it's a blog.
Going to the official Firefox site and searching for "fennec" matched nothing. Yea! With it being so easy to get, I'll be trying it "real soon now".
This is just my opinion on the guy. You're all free to agree or disagree.
Back in the late 80s I knew a guy who (at the time) had a job in the comics industry. Some of you might remember that some Bloom County strips featured a heavy metal band called Death Tongue. After a short period of time, it became Billy and the Boingers. Why? My friend told me that Breathed "got some complaints about the name Death Tongue" so he changed it. My personal take on this is that it sure didn't take much, just a few reader complaints, to make Breathed completely cave in.
He made this really big deal when he stopped Bloom County and started Outland that nobody from Bloom County would ever appear in it. His central character was Ronald-Ann, the worst character in his Bloom County strip. I'm sure the syndicate told him that his strip sucked and he better fix it, so in comes Opus to the rescue, followed by Bill the Cat and others. Integrity? Well, Breathed has always caved in when given a choice, so you can make up your own mind about whether he has integrity or not.
Breathed's post Bloom County work sucks. Big time. Read it. Most of you will agree with me. Even better, look on your favorite search engine for some interviews with him. He is one very strange dude. I don't mean eccentric. The word "eccentric" doesn't even begin to describe him. Think of crazy weird or scary weird and you will know what he's like. Again, just look for and read the interviews and decide if you really think he's somebody anyone should pay any attention to or care what he thinks.
Yes, there are various freeware and commercial products that let you rip and copy DVDs. I would point you at some websites, but I'm afraid of the Slashdot Effect causing them problems.
DVD Decrypter hasn't been updated in years because it's author was given a choice between facing a very expensive lawsuit or turning over the code and stopping work on it. He chose the latter. DVD Decrypter works fine on most DVDs, but not all.
AnyDVD is a commercial ripper that works on all DVDs and is updated regularly.
DVDFab HD Decrypter is a commercial ripper that works on all DVDs and is updated regularly. There is a free version available, but it may not be very useful to novices.
Once you rip a DVD, various programs can be used to burn it. One of the best is ImgBurn, which is freeware.
I know it goes against the norm, but I actually read the article. It clearly states that the drivers in this program must play a very specific game designed to improve visual alertness. So if you thought that Allstate (the "insurers" in this article) was going to give discounts to WOW players, think again.
My 12-yr-old has an email under our ISP account that I can monitor and it barely matters. Email is what her Mum & Dad use. Instead, she's obsessed with IM ("MSN" is what she calls it), facebook & MySpace. *That's* what keeps me awake at night.
I don't want to give a lot of personal details, but my sibling has 3 kids and this is definitely the biggest worry they have. The oldest is in college now and the youngest is in middle school and there's no real worries there. The middle child has been a My Space addict. He just could not live without it and spent probably 2+ hours each day on it. Even though My Space wasn't supposed to allow kids under 15 to have pages, he and his friends signed up for accounts and said their age was 99 years old. My Space said "Thank you sir!" and created the accounts.
I'd agree with the others who say that young kids don't need their own email accounts. Only my sibling's oldest child has one as far as I know. IM, Facebook, My Space and "texting" (ugly Americanism for what the rest of the world calls SMS) are bigger worries. My nephew who is the My Space addict also managed to run up over $200 in texting charges one month and that kind of nonsense is quite common among parents of kids these days. I had a co-worker whose son did the same thing and I've heard of much worse than that. Downloading MP3 files is also a big worry and again, it's a problem with the middle child here. I was asked to have a talk with him by his parents on the foolishness of doing this and I could tell by the expression on his face that he wasn't really all that keen on hearing what I had to say and how he thinks that I Just Don't Get It. The only thing that saves him is that he doesn't listen to anybody on a major label, so the RIAA is unlikely to be looking for any of the stuff he likes. I can personally attest to the fact that I've had to put on my security hat and clean up the family PC that he got infected with a virus from careless MP3 downloading. All of these are bigger worries than email.
I've posted on this before. The US program is designed to give the illusion that the patent office is really and truly trying to reform while in reality nothing changes. I'm too lazy to look up the last article on Slashdot about the US project, but if you crunch the numbers it's clear that fewer than 1% of submitted patents are even eligible for the program at all. A handful of patents will be rejected because of it, yes, but by and large the US patent office continues its work to let businesses patent everything possible.
Better for the kid to learn now that "free speech" is (and always has been) a crock of shit in the U.S.
Once again, another liberal nut job fails to understand that no rights are absolute. Tell ya what. Let me put it in terms you can understand. Let's say that through some social engineering that I find out your real name, address and social security number. Then I create a web page and simply post this information. I do nothing else. I just post it. All of it is factual. Then when your life gets ruined by identity theft and you want to send me to jail, I say "You can't. I have freedom of speech. I told the truth and I did not in any way ask anyone to take your identity. You have to suck it up. Freedom of speech and all that." So tell me dear sir, would then just happily go away because, dang it, there's nothing you can do about it? After all, free speech is absolute and has no limits.
I thought not.
Big deal. I'd say that 99% of Usenet users use it for the binary groups and they pay to get those through a provider that carries them. The non-binary groups have mostly been worthless for a long time now and that's all Comcast and similar providers carried. Those who can't live without comp.lang.perl or whatever can pay to get it, if they wish, through one of many providers so it's not like it's impossible to get Usenet now.
For those who don't know, during the last season of his TV show "Seinfeld", Jerry Seinfeld was offered $200 million US ($100 per season) for 2 final seasons of the show. He turned it down. Since the show ended, Jerry has used his voice in one animated movie, done a few American Express commercials and a few TV appearances. I think it's pretty safe to assume that Jerry Seinfeld is rich and that if you are going to get him to work for you, it's going to be expensive.
So we can assume that getting him for the commercials wasn't cheap. Now the Microsoft shill tells us that this was "not unexpected" that the commercials failed. I guess the meetings on the spots went something like this:
Ad agency: Yeah, these ads are going to cost a lot of money because Jerry Seinfeld is probably the most expensive guy you can get for an ad. And preliminary test audiences have shown us that 60% hate the ads and 70% don't understand the point of them.
Microsoft: Sign us up now!
Just gives a whole new meaning to "clueless" when it comes to Microsoft. Maybe it would have been better to have just said "Look, we knew the ads were quirky, but we hoped they would catch on" rather than saying essentially "We knew most likely it would fail but we spent the money anyway because we are idiots and our shareholders won't hold us accountable".
So more than 467,000 patents were filed in 2007. Let's just call it 467,000 to simplify the math. 74 patents were submitted to the program. So that means that 1 out of every 6310 patents were submitted to this program. As I have said before, this whole program is a scam designed to convince the complainers that the patent office is "doing something" about the "patent problem".
b I used to work for the US government at one time and I can promise you all that they will never, never, never do anything to cut their funding and lowering the number of patents would cut their funding. They will instead set up bogus programs like this that will catch a few bad patents, which they will then hold up as examples that things are changing for the better. It's all smoke and mirrors.
I can speak and read Russian reasonably well and I have a few friends who live in Ukraine and Russia. I live in the USA. I can send SMS to any of my friends in Ukraine, but only some of them can send SMS back to me. I don't remember which one, but one of the two biggest mobile phone companies in Ukraine simply does not allow their customers to send SMS to the USA. The other one does allow it. Again, incoming SMS is no problem.
In Russia, I have a friend with the opposite problem. She can send SMS to me with no problem, but I cannot send SMS to her. Basically T-Mobile (my provider) says that her company (Megafon) has problems accepting SMS from T-Mobile and they (Megafon) aren't interested in fixing it. T-Mobile says it is an issue Megafon has to fix. So the only way that I could send SMS to my friend was to use Megafon's website which allows you to send SMS via the web to their customers.
Note that this has all been true for years and has nothing to do with the Georgia-Russia situation. Ukraine has excellent relations with the USA and nobody knows why one of their major mobile phone providers refuses to allow its customers to send SMS to the USA while the other one has no such restrictions, but that's how it is. A wise man once said "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" or something like that.
You forget the main reason the tools and the crime exists in Russia:
- a weak, corrupt legal system.
Russians (and quite a few people in the other states of the ex-USSR) have a weird sense of entitlement that causes them to believe that it's perfectly acceptable to steal from the rich. They suffered under communism for so long that it's quite all right to get some payback by stealing from the West now.
Since Russian law really doesn't care about crimes that are committed outside of Russia against non-Russians and anyway you can just bribe a judge to get whatever ruling you want, there really is no stopping these people. Well, I can think of ways to stop them, but let's just say that I don't think the USA or the EU has the stomach for what it would take. The weak legal system argument probably applies to China too.
Okay, so they include a 6x glas sphere. How nice, but you need a 500x microscope to read it. The sphere has a large base and it can be opened. Why not include the tool to read the document with the document?
You're expecting an awful lot for something that cost only $25,000 each copy to produce. :-) That's the real cost of each disc/globe configuration according to the article.
The reality of this insane suggestion...
...
1. Polling place has paper ballots, BUT
a. Nobody who works there knows how to use them because it's been too many years since they had to do it.
b. There aren't enough devices (pens, pencils, whatever) to use for voting because they weren't supposed to have to do this.
c. Lengthy lines caused by chaos make many people just give up and go home without voting.
d. Candidate that you wanted to win loses because of c (you didn't expect that, did you?)
2. Federal government takes a VERY dim view of how you "disenfranchised" voters and created a very big mess that they now have to deal with every election by placing armed guards in the polling places to prevent repeats from jerks like you. Your reward? Years in a federal pen, with Bubba to make sweet, sweet love to you every night whether you want it or not.
3. Lack of sympathy from all parties who hear about it. Perception of you as a lunatic who could have just "tried to explain to the state government about the problems instead of taking the law into his own hands". Loss of your job. Maybe also as a free bonus you pick up a nice disease like, I don't know, AIDS, from Bubba (see point #2 above.).
Please let us know when and were you will be doing this so we can watch as you destroy your life to make a point. Otherwise, shut up talking smack about stuff you are never going to do.
We need term limits in Congress.
As a voter you have every right to vote against incumbents if you wish. Making term limits a law simply covers up for the fact that most voters don't pay attention. Forcing them to choose someone new doesn't really address that. Making them have to suffer with the person they put in office until the next election does teach a lesson that sometimes gets learned. Term limits will require a constitutional amendment and I suppose I don't have to lecture you on the odds of that happening (not good, in case you don't know).
As usual on Slashdot, what the submitter says happened and what the article says happened aren't the same.
According to the article:
A fire broke out on the 2nd floor of the subject's home. In the process of responding to this, firefighters found a LOT of chemicals, about 1500 different ones to be exact. The home was not zoned to be a chemical lab, so doing so much chemical work there violated zoning laws.
So while it's quite fun to blame "evil" governments, had a fire not broken out nothing would have happened. And nobody who's railing about the government seems to have any smart ideas on how a home user is going to properly dispose of chemical waste in a legal and environmentally sound way. For all we know he was just dumping stuff down the toilet, which probably isn't legal.
wait until you see the singapore or korean parliament footages. circus doesnt describe it.
You mean Taiwan, not Singapore. Of course if you actually knew anything about either of these countries you would know why such behavior would not happen in Singapore (hint - when you live in a one party system there's not really anybody to argue with).
Any lawyers know if there are any countries which would absolutely refuse extradition?
Typically countries refuse extradition for their citizens only. France will not extradite its citizens, nor will Brazil. In fact, Great Train robber Ronnie Biggs moved to Brazil and became a citizen before anybody in the UK knew where he was (this was decades ago) and when they asked Brazil to extradite him, they were told basically "It sucks to be you".
EU countries will not extradite foreign citizens to face the death penalty, nor will Canada under most circumstances, but that doesn't apply here. Cuba would be a good bet as Cuba typically won't extradite anybody back to the USA for any reason. Fugitive financier Robert Vesco lived there for decades safe from US law until he died late last year.