But those are the laws. He uses them to his advantage. That he succeeds at the expense of others just magnifies the hypocrisy of it all.

Not really sure if he is seriously believes his wacked shit, or just taking the piss.. Either way, buy some popcorn, sit back, and enjoy the show! :)

You must admit he has some large diamond hard balls..

He is a retired lawyer, two of his kids are lawyers too. He has this wonderful way of tying the government in knots. For instance his clan/cult have a big house. This is a church. The swimming pool is a baptismal font. All income is tax free due to being a religion. IRS was not pleased, but he beat them.

His views are totally wacko but playing the govt off against itself is just awesome.

USA postal service considers that body part "non-essential". You get a pittance.

Google it!

It is not THAT bad. The whole nation is NAT'ed. You will not have a proper IP address. almost certainly 10.x.x.x. I use the web a lot, and the vast majority of sites work. Groklaw did not work for me, or BBC. But Tor gets around all of that. BitTorrent is slow due to no inbound connections.

To me the bigger problem is dumbass companies trying to 'help' me by detecting my location and localizing.. Just because I am in Whereveristan does not mean I can read the language. My http headers specify us-en. Do not redirect to chinese, or whatever. Annoying.

Time zones are also a PITA because you are awake and they are asleep, or vice versa.

All that aside, screw the internet, and have fun, eat some new foods, meet some locals, wander around aimlessly. Say "Hello", smile. Many do not speak english, but they all studied it from grade school on up. Write it down. But one of those calculator translator things, and have somebody show you the buttons to put it into english mode. Better ones have sound. About $20-30.

Buy a phone with a SIM card. 110 is like 911 in the states. 114 is tourist help. Free. Everywhere. They speak multiple languages. Tell them what you want, hand the phone to the taxi driver, solved.

Check it out..

Do planets stagnate? Same thoughts reverberating? Maybe some pool their replicator rations and take a trip. Record everything ala googleMaps++, come home you sell the reality show version, the art, etc.

On the way home with objective in hand, mention in passing: "You should check out x, y, and z. Stop by and download our culture any time, and we hope to be back to yours in 100 years. Have a nice day!"

McNeally, Ellison, Gates, Brin, Branson, etc.

New billionaires have big egos, and it only takes one!

Did the pause thing, and you could play back at 10% faster to catch up..

Is still science IMO..

Just saying.

The speed of sound depends on the density of the air. Your acceleration would also be affected, drag is at a cube rate or fourth?!? rate. Gravity depends on the distance from the center of the earth. Without doing the math, there should be some region where resistance is low, acceleration fairly high, allowing supersonic speed.

Some body armor, perhaps a viscous gel embedded with carbon fiber, seems wise! Maybe a helmet to keep facial features from being torn removed.. Frost burn, too.

Generally south east asia is pretty good. China is communist, so is Vietnam. But this is really in name only. They do not make any effort at being friendly or fuzzy to the population. But as a foreigner living there, you can say what you want about the government, and pretty much do what you want. They do not want a story about you being arrested on some BS in the international papers.

They are busy building infrastructure so there is no money for fancy ID cards, camera networks, or much spying. Even in china, the internet spying is looking for chinese words, not english..

Language is not a big issue, as the last 20 years english is taught to all school kids.
Weather is nice, internet works good, 5 minute walk to the beach, cheap standard of living.

Go communists!

This plus data mining:
1) Point one of these these in each direction on every traffic light
2) Correlate cell phone conversations (just the participants, not the audio)
3) Add in some credit card data
4) Wait for Moore's law to catch up.

Result:
a) Suicide bombers have all their friends checked out, then all their friends, etc.
Eventually patterns will emerge, allowing ringleaders to be found.
A few dozen bombers in a region would quickly generate some patterns.

b) Death of all privacy as we know it..

They don't, they breathe. In any case, making those scrubbers is a high-energy-cost activity and would be a net loss. Instead, you use the CO2 output to produce Algae, a process already tested by the USDOE at Sandia National Labs, where they were able to capture over 80% of the CO2 output in the algae. Then you can in turn make the algae into biodiesel and fertilizer, fixing some of the carbon and getting a second use out of the rest. In other words, your idea is stupid, and slashdot is a stupider place for having to hear it - but there is a similar, working solution.

Partition the drive into BlockSize/4KB logical disks.
Make sure the alignment is correct, then RAID these
into 1 big disk.

This gives us one usable disk with maybe 128kb clusters.

Small files would need to share a cluster, but they
would have done that anyway..

read it here: http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12724800&source=hptextfeature

Quote:
Bhumibol's tale, even if stripped of the mythology his courtiers have spent decades constructing around him, is exceptional. The American-born son of a half-Chinese commoner accidentally inherits a throne close to extinction and revives it, creating one of the world's most powerful and wealthy monarchies, and surely the only one of any significance to have gained in political power in modern times. The king's charisma, intelligence, talents (from playing the saxophone to rain-making, a science in which he holds a European patent) and deep concern for his people's welfare make him adored at home and admired around the world. His image perhaps reaches its zenith in 1992, after the army shoots dozens of pro-democracy protesters in Bangkok, when television shows both the army leader (and prime minister) Suchinda Kraprayoon and the protest leader, Chamlong Srimuang (now a PAD stalwart), kneeling in an audience with him. Shortly afterwards General Suchinda resigns, and the king is given credit for the restoration of democracy.

I can see how this might piss of the Powers That Be..