We tried giving up defense spending, twice, what did we get? wwI and wwII. The US spends so much on its military so some uppity country doesnt try to take over the world, because they know we can kick them halfway around the solar system. Oh granted, alot of factors led to the wars, but US military might may have helped prevent them. A US buildup in France in the 30s may have deterred germany, etc. The price of peace is high.
Actually, there can be a serious argument made that we DO have cheap airline flights due to the government. In the beginning, planes were a novelty, yes humans could fly now, but what good were they? A few people realized that they could be good for reconnisance during times of war, maybe even droping a couple of bombs on peoples heads. Not only that, but you could send mail with them. Almost all of the major air carriers today, United, Northwest, American, got their starts delivering mail. This was essentially a govt. subsidy of the fledgling air industry. Alot of the first mail planes were also govt surplus from wwI So the govt subsidised flight in two ways, by providing cheap planes, and by providing a profitable buisness to use those planes for. The first profitable passenger flights werent until the mid 1930's and the DC-3 Before then, planes carried passengers, but the profit was made from the mail. I agree with you that nasa is probably doing more harm than good, but a knee jerk reaction that govt involvement automatically means death to an industry is a false one. There are alot of things the govt could do to promote private development of launch tech.
I assume You dont drive a car then? Youve got a greater chance of dying from an auto accident than from a meltdown. People should be all in favor of nukes in space, the chances of dying from a nuclear accident in space are outweighed by the lives saved by using nuclear power to stop an asteroid the would wipe out the human race. And due to murphys law, there is a 'stroid out there with our name on it
I didnt overlook it, I intentionally failed to mention it, fission or fusion, its still a nuclear reaction, and once your average person hears the magic word, nuclear, they suddenly become dead set against it, no matter how much good sense it might make, as in this case.;-)
Also, did you know that the NUCLEAR reactions in the sun create millions of tiny particles that can pass throgh the entire earth, without even slowing down? that these NUCLEAR reaction products have unknown health effects, and it is UNKNOWN whether RADIATION collectors such as solar panels might interact with them, with disastrous result.
you can make anything scary, even neutrinos, the most harmless particles in the universe.
I recall reading some studies showing how we could not simply 'convert' north america to solar/wind power, because there is simply no way to generate the same amount of energy, regardless of cost.
absolutely not true. In fact, you could do it with just wind if you wanted. Go read this article for more information, the gist is : "To provide 20% of the nation's electricity, only about 0.6% of the land of the lower 48 states would have to be developed with wind turbines. Furthermore, less than 5% of this land would be occupied by wind turbines, electrical equipment, and access roads. Most existing land use, such as farming and ranching, could remain as it is now." So to provide 100%, use 3% of the nations land area, while actually covering.15% such that it cant be used for anything else, like farming. Granted, it would be expensive, but it could be done.
Also, they quote rates of 1.25/kwh for solar, which is the cheapest there, but is about 15 times more expensive than in the U.S (excluding california, its getting close there, maybe 2x more expensive)
Not only that, but youre using a NUCLEAR power source! Not many of you may know this, but the sun is a giant NUCLEAR furnace, where hydrogen is built into helium, at a temperature of MILLIONS of degrees. Were you also aware that most solar panels actually collect the RADIATION put out by the sun? I dont know about you, but I dont want RADIATION collectors anywhere near me or my CHILDREN. We need to stop all use of NUCLEAR power, including solar, and move to safe, clean COAL energy, just like our VP says to.
Or, you could use something like freenet, such that something like 50k or so of a file was served from a single point. If youre downloading 50k from 1000 servers, it doesnt really matter if you can only up at 28k. Even at 10 Mb/s, maxing out your pipe, youre still only using 1.25k/s from each server.And reaqlly, when was the last time you maxed out your pipe? Given enoguh distributed computers, you can keep anything online, as long as you have any up capability whatsoever
Wolfram uses the same lame liscencing scheme for Mathematica as MS wants to use on XP . I dont care how easy it is to get another code, I paid for your software, I shouldnt have to come crawling back to you on my hands and knees, begging you to let me install something THAT I PAID FOR. In the meantime, ive switched to MAPLE V, which does the same stuff without the draconian measures, and I paid for Maple V as well.
And it wont affect computer savvy people, who will just find out the code needed for unlimited installs. So basically, it will only affect stupid people. Wasnt this a dilbert?
And it took an american (me) to correct your spelling of rhyme. A rime means eather a sea chantee or a type of deposit usually found around the inside of a tank in a ring
You make my point nicely, its not the fact that theyre japanese, its their buisness model that prevents innovation. The hondas and sony's have moved away from that buisness model, and have become innovative and prosperous, others have not, and so they suffer.
and have access to 20 times more software and cheap peripheral devices than your lovely Mac.
So youre saying there are 360,000 prehipheral and software products for the PC, that are NOT available for the mac? at last count, there were 18k products that were available for the mac, not to mention virtual pc wich allows you to run those that arent. at most, i would say there are probably a couple thousand products that cant be run on a mac at all, under any circumstances, hardly 20x.
It must be rather obvious to everyone that Japan has invented, created and developed many things. Just think of all the Multinational companies from Japan
Japan is the BASF of countries. We didnt invent the tv, we made it cheaper. We didnt invent the automobile, we made it smaller and cheaper. We didnt invent the video game, we just make good ones and then dont release them in the US, to spite them for nuking us back in the day.
The difference lies within how a business should be run/managed/controlled.
This is exactly right, and japanese buisness are doing a crappy job of rewarding innovation, due to the way they run their buisneses. Theres the story of the japanese guy who invented the blue diode, the invention that makes white diodes possible, along with faster optical drives etc. His invention made the company hundreds of millions of dollars, all he got was a measly raise and no promotion. He then got offers from various US companies offering him salires 2-3x what he was getting, royalties on anything he invented, and offers to head departments at various colleges. He decided, wisely that his talents werent appreciated in japan, and immigrated. The seniority system in japan and gaurenteed job placement for life prevents raises and advancements for innovative people, thus stifling innovation as a whole. This is not good or bad, if your goal is 100% employment and job security, its very good, if you want innovation, its not such a good idea.
Actually the whole motherboard slides out the bottom for easy cleaning, just hose it down and pop it back in. Sriously though, it may look like a toaster, but if youre shoving bread into the CD slot, youre an idiot.
Slashdot Mirror
We tried giving up defense spending, twice, what did we get? wwI and wwII. The US spends so much on its military so some uppity country doesnt try to take over the world, because they know we can kick them halfway around the solar system. Oh granted, alot of factors led to the wars, but US military might may have helped prevent them. A US buildup in France in the 30s may have deterred germany, etc. The price of peace is high.
Actually, there can be a serious argument made that we DO have cheap airline flights due to the government. In the beginning, planes were a novelty, yes humans could fly now, but what good were they? A few people realized that they could be good for reconnisance during times of war, maybe even droping a couple of bombs on peoples heads. Not only that, but you could send mail with them. Almost all of the major air carriers today, United, Northwest, American, got their starts delivering mail. This was essentially a govt. subsidy of the fledgling air industry. Alot of the first mail planes were also govt surplus from wwI So the govt subsidised flight in two ways, by providing cheap planes, and by providing a profitable buisness to use those planes for. The first profitable passenger flights werent until the mid 1930's and the DC-3 Before then, planes carried passengers, but the profit was made from the mail. I agree with you that nasa is probably doing more harm than good, but a knee jerk reaction that govt involvement automatically means death to an industry is a false one. There are alot of things the govt could do to promote private development of launch tech.
I assume You dont drive a car then? Youve got a greater chance of dying from an auto accident than from a meltdown. People should be all in favor of nukes in space, the chances of dying from a nuclear accident in space are outweighed by the lives saved by using nuclear power to stop an asteroid the would wipe out the human race. And due to murphys law, there is a 'stroid out there with our name on it
1: I Wish I was Omnipotent 2: I wish I was Omniscient 3: I wish I could turn the first two off and on at will
Also, did you know that the NUCLEAR reactions in the sun create millions of tiny particles that can pass throgh the entire earth, without even slowing down? that these NUCLEAR reaction products have unknown health effects, and it is UNKNOWN whether RADIATION collectors such as solar panels might interact with them, with disastrous result.
you can make anything scary, even neutrinos, the most harmless particles in the universe.
oops, should have previewed, heres the missing address http://www.nrel.gov/wind/potential.html
absolutely not true. In fact, you could do it with just wind if you wanted. Go read this article for more information, the gist is : "To provide 20% of the nation's electricity, only about 0.6% of the land of the lower 48 states would have to be developed with wind turbines. Furthermore, less than 5% of this land would be occupied by wind turbines, electrical equipment, and access roads. Most existing land use, such as farming and ranching, could remain as it is now." So to provide 100%, use 3% of the nations land area, while actually covering .15% such that it cant be used for anything else, like farming. Granted, it would be expensive, but it could be done.
Also, they quote rates of 1.25/kwh for solar, which is the cheapest there, but is about 15 times more expensive than in the U.S (excluding california, its getting close there, maybe 2x more expensive)
Not only that, but youre using a NUCLEAR power source! Not many of you may know this, but the sun is a giant NUCLEAR furnace, where hydrogen is built into helium, at a temperature of MILLIONS of degrees. Were you also aware that most solar panels actually collect the RADIATION put out by the sun? I dont know about you, but I dont want RADIATION collectors anywhere near me or my CHILDREN. We need to stop all use of NUCLEAR power, including solar, and move to safe, clean COAL energy, just like our VP says to.
Jahwol
Or, you could use something like freenet, such that something like 50k or so of a file was served from a single point. If youre downloading 50k from 1000 servers, it doesnt really matter if you can only up at 28k. Even at 10 Mb/s, maxing out your pipe, youre still only using 1.25k/s from each server.And reaqlly, when was the last time you maxed out your pipe? Given enoguh distributed computers, you can keep anything online, as long as you have any up capability whatsoever
And it wont affect computer savvy people, who will just find out the code needed for unlimited installs. So basically, it will only affect stupid people. Wasnt this a dilbert?
And it took an american (me) to correct your spelling of rhyme. A rime means eather a sea chantee or a type of deposit usually found around the inside of a tank in a ring
You forget that most college kids are the ones providing the files to share, and most colleges turn a blind eye to such practices.
So youre saying there are 360,000 prehipheral and software products for the PC, that are NOT available for the mac? at last count, there were 18k products that were available for the mac, not to mention virtual pc wich allows you to run those that arent. at most, i would say there are probably a couple thousand products that cant be run on a mac at all, under any circumstances, hardly 20x.
Japan is the BASF of countries. We didnt invent the tv, we made it cheaper. We didnt invent the automobile, we made it smaller and cheaper. We didnt invent the video game, we just make good ones and then dont release them in the US, to spite them for nuking us back in the day.
The difference lies within how a business should be run/managed/controlled.
This is exactly right, and japanese buisness are doing a crappy job of rewarding innovation, due to the way they run their buisneses. Theres the story of the japanese guy who invented the blue diode, the invention that makes white diodes possible, along with faster optical drives etc. His invention made the company hundreds of millions of dollars, all he got was a measly raise and no promotion. He then got offers from various US companies offering him salires 2-3x what he was getting, royalties on anything he invented, and offers to head departments at various colleges. He decided, wisely that his talents werent appreciated in japan, and immigrated. The seniority system in japan and gaurenteed job placement for life prevents raises and advancements for innovative people, thus stifling innovation as a whole. This is not good or bad, if your goal is 100% employment and job security, its very good, if you want innovation, its not such a good idea.
-Geo. W. Bush
-L. Torvalds