Well... dollars do suck from a security standpoint. There's the paper bits, which are inconvenient in large amounts. And there's the usual electronic methods, whose security is practically criminal: the idea that somebody could find my wallet and use it to drain my bank account, or incur five-figure debts with the onus of disproof on me, is utterly absurd.

Not that Bitcoin is automatically all that much better: it's still rather inconvenient and its security apparently rather doubtful. Rolling out chip-and-PIN in the US might be a better solution, building on the existing infrastructure rather than having to create a whole new one. (Especially since Bitcoin's version of it appears to be heavily based on awarding large profits to early adopters rather than just about creating a better infrastructure.)

Ah, ok. Somehow, I find that less neat, if it's just a built-in Dustbuster. Still, as one whose car is in DIRE need of a vacuuming, I gotta say I'd be glad to have the system there.

I live in Maryland. We get salt on the roads, but only a few times a year. Surely it would be better to have it washed off, but the rain seems to do the job well enough. I have yet to have rust as a significant factor.

How does that work? Is it tied in to engine vacuum? Or is it just plugged in to the electrical system?

I find that the exterior of my car more or less takes care of itself. Sure, it could be better, but it rains and the worst of the crud is washed off. And then the mud kicked up puts more crud on; even if I did put effort into washing it, it would be nearly as dirty within weeks. I practically never wash my car, and they last well over a decade. It's not the limiting factor in the car's life span.

What I'd really like it something that made the *interior* cleaner. Of course it's not going to neaten up my tool boxes and spare clothes and fast-food wrappers, but if it could somehow at least deal better with stains and dripped mud, that would make me happy.

I gave strong consideration to the Honda Element for just that reason; it's designed to be hosed out. I ended up going with the Fit for the mileage. And it could really use some detailing. I get my car cleaned every so often not for the outside, but because they also do the inside.

The money does not flow into the politician's bank accounts. That's why it's not a bribe. They are not getting wealthy off of it; even the revolving door promises that they'll get a lucrative position after they leave Congress can't really explain it since that is often years or decades away.

The politicians are mostly wealthy to start with, and their income sources are fairly obvious. They make money the old fashioned way, being lawyers and executives with comical salaries, which they spin into even bigger investments. The politicians who start poor tend to remain poor. (Or rather, middle class. It's practically impossible for an actually poor person to be elected. But they're poor compared to the millionaire's club which makes up about half of Congress.)

I don't think I agree with your interpretation of this event. The MPAA discovered that even though they are sympathetic to Democratic lawmakers on most issues, they disagree on the pocketbook issue that makes the MPAA different from the sum of a bunch of Hollywood lefties. Those lefties are probably still supporting Democrats as individuals, but their collective action on financial matters runs to right-wing, pro-business, anti-consumer tactics.

So they're probably fighting against themselves, and donating out of both sides of their pockets. Which actually isn't uncommon for people whose social consciences say one thing but whose livelihoods say another.

They weren't buying the Democrats; they don't want to buy the Republicans. Republicans want to give the MPAA what they want; that's the way they actually believe the world works. So they're going to put money into getting Republicans elected over Democrats. Which is going to have effects on a lot of areas other than IP matters, and I think it's going to make them very unhappy.

Cool. Thanks.

When you talk about the "mindless voters", I'm not sure you're disagreeing with me at all. The voters have the power to fix it, or at least make a change in the individual, and that would create powerful incentives for the one in power to be different.

Isn't that counter to the point? I thought the whole idea of Lego was to be able to buy many instances of a few standardized, interchangeable components and assemble them into anything you want.

If you had a machine that could print custom Lego parts, wouldn't you just skip the Lego entirely and just 3D print whatever the final thing is supposed to be?

Sorry, I didn't play much with Legos and I'm not part of Lego culture. I infer from reading Slashdot that people really enjoy making unlikely things out of them, for the lulz, which is cool. So I apologize for being naive, but I don't understand why you'd want custom Lego parts.

I *do* insist that the problem is with the voters. If the voters were that irate about the politicians, they'd vote them out. Even if the new ones were just as bad, the voters would express their ire by voting them out, too.

Political donations don't buy votes. No politician is going to risk going to jail for taking bribes.

What political donations buy is the election of candidates who are sympathetic to you without having to be paid. They can't give money directly to the candidates anyway. The unlimited funds go to "uncoordinated" separate groups who spend it not on limousines and fact-finding tours to tropical islands but on campaign ads.

That's the point of connection. They're not buying the politicians. They're buying the voters. And they're buying them not with money, but with whatever tools of mental manipulation the ad-makers can dream up. They spend the money to blanket the airwaves.

All the voters have to do is to think, question whether the ads are telling the truth, and wonder why if they can form an objective picture from two biased, manipulated sets of mutually contradictory ads. That doesn't seem like a lot to ask, but the fact that the incumbents are repeatedly returned to office is a strong clue that they're not.

Maybe it would be futile and ineffective to keep turfing out politicians in favor of new ones. But it's not an experiment the voters have tried. If they did, maybe the politicians would change the way they operate; I don't know. I do know that your picture of how the process works is deeply flawed, and most voters seem equally uninterested in actually learning how it does work.

Your outrage at the politicians is too easy. They're doing what the voters tell them to do. If the voters are doing what the money is telling them to do, don't tell it to the politicians, or to me. Tell it to them. If you can figure out how to get them to listen, I'm all for it.

The discovery of pulsars rotating around each other by Hulse and Taylor was a major confirmation of general relativity because of the way they were radiating energy in gravitational waves. Is there any way to use black holes to confirm this even more? Would it be something we could help "point" a gravitational wave detector at?

(Sorry, IANAP, so I apologize if this is a stupid question.)

I'm just saying there ARE a lot of people who really want that. I'm not one of them; I actually kind of prefer things "spoiled". (Hell, if I'd waited until Lost had finished completely, I might have skipped it altogether and had a few dozen hours of my life back.)

I do think it's a real part of culture to discuss TV that's on Right Now. Not my thing, but I can see why a lot of other people are into it. Perhaps fewer than they think; maybe a lot of people would be happier ditching the cable and getting Netflix. I think the cable providers definitely fear that.

But I don't get the hate for DVRs; people time-shift things a few hours or a few days and can still get in on the conversation. Yeah, if you let it go for months you might as well just wait until it's on Netflix (though a LOT of Netflix material is still DVD-only, and I still maintain the mail service).

Thanks! I'd mod you "informative" but obviously... (It's actually giving me a mod drop-down box, but I know it wouldn't really work.)

I thought the point of this contraption was that those were things you could do after the exposure (except perhaps for the "low light performance"). Am I off base?