Actually, they were quite nice, if expensive machines. And everyone wanted one when they came out, because there was nothing like it in the consumer market. Note - nobody could *afford* one, but god, we all wanted and lusted after these things..
Nothing pisses off employees more than having a great idea and then management using it to pad their resume or get a bonus.
Recognition also means *PROMOTING THOSE WHO INNOVATE*. Too many companies run everything in a top-heavy manner and people at the bottom have no chance to get into management unless they know the right people, go play golf with them, or have dirt on their superiors that forces them to be taken seriously.
Honestly, a raffle is almost a smack in the face. If I could save your company 500K a year, but all I'll get is a pat on the back or a gimmick, I'd keep my mouth shut every time. It's just not worth the angst to see others getting rich off of my ideas.
Oh - also demote those who fail to innovate. Nothing shakes up management more than a simple idea of having the worst three performers be demoted(for real, complete with salary cuts) and the best three from the general staff be promoted every year.
The fact is that the people themselves will likely be forced to override it just to have some sense of normal workplace functionality. Or they'll do it because they don't want to be bothered.
Evidently old school attack vectors are far more likely to succeed at getting data. I'd get your managers to concentrate on physical security and internal checks instead of worrying about computer data. That doesn't mean you don't need some security, but the simple fact is that more than 90% of data theft are inside jobs and simple employee stupidity.
But you should know this already. I'd be more worried about the competency of an employee posting on slashdot about how they need help from the Peanut Gallery here than whether my files are encrypted or not.
[b] Nobody is losing Eve via Linux/Mac at all. All they're using is a horribly supported, pitiful binary version of Cedega that ran 1000x worse than via Wine. It couldn't even support DirectX9, it was that bad. Wine on the other hand, is working on supporting DX10 soon.
I wish they'd take all that supposed effort in the "official linux client" and sent it towards Wine, really.[/b]
That's exactly what they are doing. The next major change is they are planning to drop the "classic" client in favor of one that requires Shader 2.0+. Combined with less than stellar ATI support for newer video cards, and the fact that many people are having to upgrade machines that couldn't play WoW or anything modern anyways, it's easier for them to just point the group to Wine and spend all of their time making the game for Mac and Windows.
Plus, it's really a bit of an over-hyped title here... So official support for *Linux* is going away... It still will run unofficially under WINE. Also, since there's really not a lot of difference between BSD and Mac, hardcore linux users can easily partition and install BSD instead and run a modified version of the Mac program. What's one more distro to install?
The title should have been "CCP to require Linux users to switch to Wine or BSD for Continued EVE Online play." Or, "CCP discontinues Cedega support."
A 40 watt CFL would be damned bright, I don't know if I've ever seen one. Most of my lamps have 27 watt twirley tubes. They vary in intensity, in color, in startup time, and some grow brighter the longer they're on. The one on the front porch won't light if the temperature gets below 0F, the back porch light has lit every time. It's also dimmer and bluer. *****
Note how the claims are all over the place, though, for the equivalence for bulbs on that page. The truth is that a 27-28W CFL is roughly the same as a good 100W incandescent bulb(The best put out about 1750 lumen) And by simple math, about 17W or so for a 60W bulb. They're not the enormous power saving devices as the ads state, but even at roughly 30% the power required, it's worth considering as a replacement if it will work for you.
Though, replacing your old fridge will save way more power per month...
"In 1974 Professor Hawking argued that due to quantum effects, primordial black holes created during the Big Bang could "evaporate" by a theoretical process now referred to as Hawking Radiation in which particles of matter would be emitted.
Under this theory, the smaller the size of the micro black hole, the faster the evaporation rate, resulting in a sudden burst of particles as the micro black hole suddenly explodes."
The real question is how much damage would an exploding black hole of this size actually do? My guess is not a whole lot, but enough to mangle the test lab pretty badly.
They don't troll as such, but they are still basically sucking investors for loads of money. Why? Because like this spaceplane concept, it won't actually do the one thing that it really needs to do, which is to make it to orbit. Not because of technical reasons. But because both designs are several times too small a fuel supply to actually make it to a stable orbit. This means a complete re-design with a far larger vehicle would be required.
They obviously know this, so why they are making this "spaceplane" like this... It makes you wonder.
http://sportplanesflorida.com/wings.htm Looks like they already DO have foldable versions of these little cheap aircraft. Modifying the landing gear and controls to a 4 wheel design and making it roadworthy doesn't seem so far-fetched.
Note - the typical drivers license in Germany is just about as involved and time consuming. It's not unreasonable to assume that such a limited use license could become a fairly standard thing for a lot of people.
It doesn't necessarily have to make it to orbit, though. If its goal is to merely drop a payload into space and then come back down, there's a small window for it to unload the object before it starts to drop back down. The question is whether we're talking about an hour or so or minutes.
I suspect that they plan to have the payload have its own small engine to do the final positioning and get up to orbital speeds. 5% change it actually works. It looks fancy, but seems to me to be yet another company that's trolling for rich investors. Loads of good intentions but little likelihood that it will actually work. (see SpaceX for a perfect example)
As for the space elevator, it does need to be built. If we can get items to orbit for a cost of even a thousand dollars per pound, it's suddenly possible to make space actually viable for living and exploration. Once it's built, it'll require very little day to day cost to run. The reason nobody bothers with space isn't that they don't want to get up there. It's the horrendous cost and less than 100% success rate.
Imagine if they could make a satellite as one giant piece of pre-assembled kit down on earth and then lift it up this way. There would be no need to spend millions on making it fit into a shuttle bay, have retractable solar panels, using exotic weight saving materials, or other costly idiocy. Most satellites today could be built for under $1 Million if you were to make it in a typical workshop and use commodity parts.(ie - ignore space and weight concerns entirely)
Also, digital is pretty much line-of-sight. There are literally millions of people in the U.S., especially in more rural areas that have no ability to get TV at all.
If you go to antennaweb.org and put in your zip code, you can see how the reality is that digital signals only are good for roughly 40-50 mils and then that's it. NADA. zilch. Get Dish or Cable TV, thankyouverymuch.
Take Santa Rosa, CA. 150,000 people. With a large antenna and a rotor to point it, you can get 2 local stations and 13 San Fransisco stations, which are 43 miles away.
With digital, You get... One local station. And one that's iffy at best. The entirety of Sonoma County has about 460,000 people in it and 50% of them will be forced to switch to cable TV to get any signal at all.(about half have, talking to friends, about half still have antennas)
Now, if you're in some place like Illinois, well, you're out of luck, no matter how flat the land is. 50 miles or so out and you're without a strong enough signal. Either it works great or not at all. That's just wrong, IMO.
Dave... Your car is overdue for its oil change. "Thank you - I'll wait a week." I really think it would be best to take advantage of the special that they are running this week. "I said no." It is only $19.95. I hear they have free coffee. "Darn it... where is that off button?" "I can tell that you are unhappy with me, Dave." (car starts driving itself to the dealership)
No, but given the lack of rules, oversight, and accountability, that 700 billion is going to pretty much go down a black hole and never be seen again.
I don't know of any economist right now who honestly thinks that the government is ever getting that money back. Not with the way things just keep getting worse and worse.
I imagine that universities make incoming students sign some kind of document that give the university over student inventions created using university resources. ****
This is only true if you receive compensation from them that requires you to sign such a contract. But few universities actually force the students to pay the full tuition. The reason that they charge so much is all a shell game, really.
The few who can pay it in cash they ignore - they likely are egotistical idiots or rich playboys. The rest they give generous stipends and grants and scholarships to. Since they're essentially paying themselves in this case, the actual cost of the "tuition" is whatever they want.
Seriously - how many grad students in technology do you know who didn't get some monetary compensation just so that they would sign those papers in case something good came out of their internship? Not one that I know of had to actually pay full price for grad school.
Think of it as like a factory rebate on a car. Everyone knows GM and Ford offers huge ones, so they expect them. Of course, with the university, it also comes with a piece of paper to sign. You get the degree for less money and they make money off of your ideas. Win-win, really.
And, honestly, if you really do have a cure for cancer or have cold fusion figured out, do something else for your PHD. If you're a mere mortal like the rest of us, ignore it all - nothing you're writing about for in a class is likely to be that earth-shattering. Shoot, it's more likely to be filed in some dark corner of their library and checked out once every decade.
- The real litmus test is whether you are taking classes normally or whether you are getting a scholarship. If you are paying money and going to classes out of your own pocket, everything that you do remains yours, unless there's a clear major project that you are working on with the university.(say, some electric car race or whatnot).
- If you are getting a scholarship, then yes, everything is theirs, pretty much. Just keep your better ideas to yourself and learn to just find other ways to solve the problems - or use more basic approaches. Obviously if the work is in conjunction with your thesis or PHD or similar, then you're kind of stuck. Do your work, but keep your better ideas to yourself. This doesn't mean to be paranoid. Merely to be a bit cautious. Give away some ideas that are required, but not everything.
- I found that the biggest problem wasn't professors but other lazy and greedy students who would leech ideas off of others in a heartbeat. Telling your friends about some great idea at a party is sure to end up being used by whomever is listening. As they say, don't talk shop outside of work.
- Also don't talk about it online or leave your latest and greatest ideas out in the open where roommates and others can see them. It's not paranoid to have a password on your computer, after all.(same with carrying them around in your backpack or similar places where some nosy person in the library can get to them)
Consider how much energy it would take to move this massively long cable. There is no way in hell that is going to be efficient. You're going to be wasting a massive amount of energy as you move the entire cable the whole time the thing is climbing. ****
If the entire system is powered from the ground, we have essentially unlimited power available. Just build a couple of reactors nearby to power it exclusively. The major problem with getting materials up to space isn't a lack of power, it's a lack of space to hold the fuel. And, of course, the safety factor. Nearly one in every 30 launches still is a failure (3% even with the best technology). This appears to do away with all of that. At least for the trip up.
http://www.g2mil.com/safety.htm It's horribly dangerous to try to get up to and back from space. Speed isn't the real issue here.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html It costs 450 million to do a single Shuttle launch. That buys a LOT of electricity or other fuel down on the ground to power a space elevator. Honestly, I can't imagine how much fuel that would buy. Dozens? Hundreds of climbs? It's worth exploring this technology in any case, as the potential long term savings is huge.
The real cause, though, appears to have been a design change in the shuttles. Originally the design called for titanium throughout the ship instead of aluminum. But it was deemed to be far too expensive when they were first built, so they went with Aluminum.
As a result, it weighed a LOT more, which required heavier shielding with less margin for error, the solid fuel boosters(added), and it barely made it into orbit instead of being able to get up to nearly geostationary orbit as originally planned. And it was much harder to fly and land - so much so that it really "flies" more like a typical plane with its engine off.(read: like a brick).
Compare the heat resistance of the two metals. I suspect that if the wings had been made out of titanium, it would have taken another minute or two to reach a catastrophic failure. This *might* have been enough to at least get into the lower atmosphere.(in theory allowing some sort of ejection/safety system to function?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_thermal_protection_system **** The Space Shuttle thermal protection system (TPS) is the barrier that protects the Space Shuttle Orbiter during the searing 1650 C (3000 F) heat of atmospheric reentry. **** Aluminum melting point: 1220 F Aluminum burns at ~6920F once it starts doing so, though, and as such is pretty near self-sustaining and impossible to put out as long as there is material to burn.
Titanium melting point: 3034 F Titanium burns at ~ 5300F once it gets going and is just as hard to put out. (burning metals like this are bad as a rule)
A drastically lower weight, though, would also allow for a slightly slower speed. Likely closer to 2500-2800 F which would technically make the heat shielding a redundant safety feature, at least on the wings.(they would melt and distort, but wouldn't actually catch on fire.
Mate, you're not tapping into anything. Everyone has varying night vision - it all depends on the number of rods you have on your retina and how well your eyes adapt to low light. So give it up with the night vision powers BS , you don't have it. ****
The "trick" here is to use more of your eye consciously by de-focusing enough so that you block out the horribly distracting and bad in low light fovea(center of your vision). Think of it as learning to utilize more of the data that is coming into your eyes. People talk about how blind people typically amplify their other senses. It's possible to do this with any sense over time, even if the others are undamaged. I'm not seeing in the dark so much as using my brain's ability to turn up the gain.
**** As for people seeing in infra red - err , no. That would require a major structural change to the rods or cones which wold require a common but as yet undiscovered genetic mutation. Apparently we all have some ability to see the very near infrared if the source is extremely bright but even that only extends a short way down. ****
I mentioned body temperature because all of our senses fall within narrow ranges. But they all differ. Some people can hear upwards of 20khz. Some cannot hear low frequencies at all. People have varying body temperature set points. Mine is at 97.8. If I'm at 98.6, I'm running a slight fever. The same is true for the structure of the eyes as well as color vision. Some people see a tiny bit farther into the infra-red than others. Some people see four *primary* colors. Some see only two(color blind).(what I meant by "4 colors" in my post - my bad) The most obvious one, though, is how some people have an extra set of taste buds that react to bitter tastes. That's quite well known. The trick is to figure out what senses that you have that are slightly better than the norm and tapping into them. After all, the objective here is to not hit things. Not to actually "see" objects in low light.
Another interesting thing about this is that do you notice how you almost never actually run face-first into something in the dark? You almost always bump against it or bang into a corner.
There's also other differences as well. Some women, for instance, have see a fourth set of colors, which gives them a much greater low-light ability (a couple for every thousand women, IIRC) as well as do great things in the visual arts. Other people have vision that extends a bit beyond the normal ranges as well. A good example if this is the typical "normal" body temperature. It was obtained by sampling a large number of people and averaging the result. Vision, hearing, and other senses are similar. So it's not surprising that the occasional blind person can actually tap into these if theirs happen to naturally be more developed than normal.
By tapping into the secondary pathways like this, I can "see" about twice as well as most people in the dark(though it's not really "seeing" like reading a paper or like a cat does). And, as DynaSoar mentioned, I can literally run through areas at night and not hit things as long as there is even a tiny amount of light.(doesn't work in caves/absolute pith black - tried that - heh)
Note - the skill can be learned, though some see better at night than others. I suspect their vision is shifted a bit more towards the infrared or their iris' are a bit larger. It took me about 2-3 years to develop it when I was growing up. My friends and I always spent a lot of time playing outside at night and some of us got pretty good at avoiding things in the dark. The hard part was learning to just trust your instincts. It's a odd feeling, though, as you only notice things a split second before you normally would hit them if you're moving faster than walking speed.
I found that a trick to doing this - and you can try this as well - is to learn to defocus your eyes during the day. Animals do this to track movement. It's a common trick hunters also use to track and find game. If you can then also do this at night, it basically shuts off a lot of your brain's trying to strain itself in low light. Since the average person's brain normally focuses intently upon just a small area in front of them, expanding that to your entire field of vision makes a huge difference.(though as noted, you can't focus on specific objects at the same time) Often, even if you can't actually see details, your eyes will notice things like faint reflections, movements, and so on.
My ex? She's nearly completely blind about 5 minutes after dusk. Opposite end of the scale as it were.
Yup, seems monopolistic to me. Using the fact YOU are the only one able to sell OS/X (like windows) AND making sure you are the only one that can sell hardware for the underlying OS, even though you allowed clone machines, by breaking it during update cycles. ****
The reason they weren't was because they actually made their own hardware and motherboards. So they technically COULD say what was done with their hardware(or so the argument went).
But think about this: IBM makes a chip and motherboard(could be ASUS or whomever, I don't know for each model). This is a normal off the shelf OEM component that is for sale to anyone. Apple is using it and installs a special set of chips/modifies it so that only that board can now run their OS.
Basically what Apple is doing is... the same thing Psystar is doing!
They are taking someone else's motherboard and hacking it to work with their OS. They have no legal leg to stand on here. Only the maker(s) of the motherboard that they are buying technically has a say about the matter of what other companies are doing with it(barely at that, even).
But the thing is... The makers of said motherboards aren't playing along with Apple's monopoly. They have Apple in a position where they can't do a thing to keep them from selling identical boards to PC builders. Apple wants to use cheap commodity hardware and remain proprietary. Not going to happen.
The most obvious thing that points to it being a "convenient accident" is that the guy himself was afraid for his life and his lawyer was trying to get him into witness protection at the time.
Sad but true. It's unfortunately all too easy to make bad things happen with aircraft, cars, and other potentially dangerous machinery(WHY he was even flying in the first place...) Selling your soul and playing with fire... well, these sorts of things do happen. I'd feel sorry for him, but I think he should have known what was going to likely happen to him when he started down this path back then.
Of course they do! When they SELL a retail copy of OS X, they are OBLIGATED to license it to whoever buys it! And that's REGARDLESS of what the new owner wants to do with it... ****
Exactly right. I think there is a potentially larger issue at work here. To date, nobody has brought this issue to the courts. See, 90%+ of EULA boilerplate is unenforceable rubbish. If you bought an item as an *individual*, of course you can do whatever you want with it short of reselling it or other business-like practices. Once this hits the fan and court makes a ruling, EULAs will essentially evaporate. Also, Apple's "can't install this on non-apple hardware" clause is also unenforceable and can safely be ignored, for the same reason. They can say anything that they wish in that EULA, but it's exactly the same as say, buying a Craftsman driver and having Sears say that you can't use non-Craftsman sockets with it. They may not fit very well, but there's nothing to stop you from trying, and nothing legally they can do about it, either.
Checking the dates, it does look like Apple forgot to register the version, which means physical damages only. Software is out, because Psystar just bought retail copies and passed them along to the end user for the same price.($0 loss there), and hardware - it's virtually identical. The only loophole that Apple could possibly have here is the motherboard. Psystar could be forced to cough up the price of an Apple motherboard(which has those special non OEM chips on it) only. All of the rest of the insides of a Mac is off-the-shelf stuff that can't be claimed as damages. (ouch?)
But it gets worse. Because of the three month "oops" by Apple, Physical damages means, at most, Apple's profit on each machine that they lost. Actual dollar and cent losses to their bottom line. Not retail costs. If that's only $50 or $100 per machine, then it doesn't make a dent in Psystar's operations.
A few reasons why Apple, IMO, is stupid to try to win this instead of settling out of court:
1:It forces the OS to be a separate entity, legally. This is almost a no-brainer to get a ruling on, since Apple is just re-using other makers' hardware. A couple of proprietary chips stuck onto some other maker's motherboard isn't going to hold much water I bet. Especially if they are only there to act as copy protection. Basically taking normal OEM stuff from ASUS or IBM or wherever and installing a lock/dongle of their own design on top of it. I'll let the legal experts here explain why Apple's toast on this one.
Apple really did this to themselves. They crawled into the "proprietary" hole while at the same time, moved to standard PC components(stopped actually making most of the hardware themselves). Only a matter of time before someone started taking the same components and building clones. There's a reason Sony still makes their own PS3 hardware. Once Apple started using commodity components, it was downhill from there.
2: It forces them to reveal their entire pricing structure and profit margins. If they are selling machines at only a tiny margin of profit(since the wholesale price of the OS can be subtracted from the machine's price in such a calculation, once they are ruled as two separate items), this may actually be a very small margin of profit.
Even IF the two aren't ruled as separate, this still sets in stone a limit for each model in recoverable damages for a clone, on a model by model basis(at most the cost of the motherboard in actual cost to Apple, since that's the only Apple specific part). At that point, Mac becomes essentially de-facto licensed. Pay the damages to Apple and you too can make and sell clones. The Clone makers will have a steep initial price, but can easily make it up on features and upgrades.
This forces Apple to be caught between a rock and a hard place. They have to build enough profit into each machine to keep the competition from paying them too little in damages. But they have to price it low enough to remain competitive. After all, charging $100 for an extra gig of memory is going to kill that price difference immediately. Charging $300 for a Hard drive that the competition is tossing in for $120... That's no longer going to work.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps, then, this is the real source or the problems. Idiots who work at the Patent Office not doing their job.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa
Of course, I suspect this is why he didn't include Apple in the suit...
Actually, they were quite nice, if expensive machines. And everyone wanted one when they came out, because there was nothing like it in the consumer market. Note - nobody could *afford* one, but god, we all wanted and lusted after these things..
3: Giving Credit to Yourself
Nothing pisses off employees more than having a great idea and then management using it to pad their resume or get a bonus.
Recognition also means *PROMOTING THOSE WHO INNOVATE*. Too many companies run everything in a top-heavy manner and people at the bottom have no chance to get into management unless they know the right people, go play golf with them, or have dirt on their superiors that forces them to be taken seriously.
Honestly, a raffle is almost a smack in the face. If I could save your company 500K a year, but all I'll get is a pat on the back or a gimmick, I'd keep my mouth shut every time. It's just not worth the angst to see others getting rich off of my ideas.
Oh - also demote those who fail to innovate. Nothing shakes up management more than a simple idea of having the worst three performers be demoted(for real, complete with salary cuts) and the best three from the general staff be promoted every year.
Now, I do wear my tin-foil hat a lot, so I'll try to answer your question.
Tinfoil won't work. It needs to be lead.
http://www.itpro.co.uk/182871/staff-forced-to-bypass-security-controls
The fact is that the people themselves will likely be forced to override it just to have some sense of normal workplace functionality. Or they'll do it because they don't want to be bothered.
It's a lot like when the U.S. missile launch codes were all set to 00000000 to keep it simple:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/jun/17/usa.oliverburkeman1
Evidently people also had the same problem - they hated the security so much that they disabled it.
And then there's this gem from last year:
http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/28/long-hacker-csc-tech-security-cx_ag_0229hacker.html
Evidently old school attack vectors are far more likely to succeed at getting data. I'd get your managers to concentrate on physical security and internal checks instead of worrying about computer data. That doesn't mean you don't need some security, but the simple fact is that more than 90% of data theft are inside jobs and simple employee stupidity.
But you should know this already. I'd be more worried about the competency of an employee posting on slashdot about how they need help from the Peanut Gallery here than whether my files are encrypted or not.
[b]
Nobody is losing Eve via Linux/Mac at all. All they're using is a horribly supported, pitiful binary version of Cedega that ran 1000x worse than via Wine. It couldn't even support DirectX9, it was that bad. Wine on the other hand, is working on supporting DX10 soon.
I wish they'd take all that supposed effort in the "official linux client" and sent it towards Wine, really.[/b]
That's exactly what they are doing. The next major change is they are planning to drop the "classic" client in favor of one that requires Shader 2.0+. Combined with less than stellar ATI support for newer video cards, and the fact that many people are having to upgrade machines that couldn't play WoW or anything modern anyways, it's easier for them to just point the group to Wine and spend all of their time making the game for Mac and Windows.
Plus, it's really a bit of an over-hyped title here... So official support for *Linux* is going away... It still will run unofficially under WINE. Also, since there's really not a lot of difference between BSD and Mac, hardcore linux users can easily partition and install BSD instead and run a modified version of the Mac program. What's one more distro to install?
The title should have been "CCP to require Linux users to switch to Wine or BSD for Continued EVE Online play." Or, "CCP discontinues Cedega support."
Apple annexed Canada? Just wow. I didn't know that had that much cash on hand.
****
Yes, that seems a bit of a stretch. OTOH, Iceland might actually be another story...
A 40 watt CFL would be damned bright, I don't know if I've ever seen one. Most of my lamps have 27 watt twirley tubes. They vary in intensity, in color, in startup time, and some grow brighter the longer they're on. The one on the front porch won't light if the temperature gets below 0F, the back porch light has lit every time. It's also dimmer and bluer.
*****
I have seen these.
http://www.lightbulbs4sale.com/category/2-to-200-Watt-Spirals.aspx?gclid=COz-h7CJtZgCFRtKbQodNThoUA
Actually I have a 85W CFL in my living room to replace an old school halogen type lamp. It's hellishly bright at full power. 5000 lumen. The ballast can dim it, thankfully.
Note how the claims are all over the place, though, for the equivalence for bulbs on that page. The truth is that a 27-28W CFL is roughly the same as a good 100W incandescent bulb(The best put out about 1750 lumen) And by simple math, about 17W or so for a 60W bulb. They're not the enormous power saving devices as the ads state, but even at roughly 30% the power required, it's worth considering as a replacement if it will work for you.
Though, replacing your old fridge will save way more power per month...
I found this online
"In 1974 Professor Hawking argued that due to quantum effects, primordial black holes created during the Big Bang could "evaporate" by a theoretical process now referred to as Hawking Radiation in which particles of matter would be emitted.
Under this theory, the smaller the size of the micro black hole, the faster the evaporation rate, resulting in a sudden burst of particles as the micro black hole suddenly explodes."
The real question is how much damage would an exploding black hole of this size actually do? My guess is not a whole lot, but enough to mangle the test lab pretty badly.
They don't troll as such, but they are still basically sucking investors for loads of money. Why? Because like this spaceplane concept, it won't actually do the one thing that it really needs to do, which is to make it to orbit. Not because of technical reasons. But because both designs are several times too small a fuel supply to actually make it to a stable orbit. This means a complete re-design with a far larger vehicle would be required.
They obviously know this, so why they are making this "spaceplane" like this... It makes you wonder.
More on the Sport Plane license:
http://sportplanesflorida.com/wings.htm
Looks like they already DO have foldable versions of these little cheap aircraft. Modifying the landing gear and controls to a 4 wheel design and making it roadworthy doesn't seem so far-fetched.
Note - the typical drivers license in Germany is just about as involved and time consuming. It's not unreasonable to assume that such a limited use license could become a fairly standard thing for a lot of people.
It doesn't necessarily have to make it to orbit, though. If its goal is to merely drop a payload into space and then come back down, there's a small window for it to unload the object before it starts to drop back down. The question is whether we're talking about an hour or so or minutes.
I suspect that they plan to have the payload have its own small engine to do the final positioning and get up to orbital speeds. 5% change it actually works. It looks fancy, but seems to me to be yet another company that's trolling for rich investors. Loads of good intentions but little likelihood that it will actually work. (see SpaceX for a perfect example)
As for the space elevator, it does need to be built. If we can get items to orbit for a cost of even a thousand dollars per pound, it's suddenly possible to make space actually viable for living and exploration. Once it's built, it'll require very little day to day cost to run. The reason nobody bothers with space isn't that they don't want to get up there. It's the horrendous cost and less than 100% success rate.
Imagine if they could make a satellite as one giant piece of pre-assembled kit down on earth and then lift it up this way. There would be no need to spend millions on making it fit into a shuttle bay, have retractable solar panels, using exotic weight saving materials, or other costly idiocy. Most satellites today could be built for under $1 Million if you were to make it in a typical workshop and use commodity parts.(ie - ignore space and weight concerns entirely)
Also, digital is pretty much line-of-sight. There are literally millions of people in the U.S., especially in more rural areas that have no ability to get TV at all.
If you go to antennaweb.org and put in your zip code, you can see how the reality is that digital signals only are good for roughly 40-50 mils and then that's it. NADA. zilch. Get Dish or Cable TV, thankyouverymuch.
Take Santa Rosa, CA. 150,000 people. With a large antenna and a rotor to point it, you can get 2 local stations and 13 San Fransisco stations, which are 43 miles away.
With digital, You get... One local station. And one that's iffy at best. The entirety of Sonoma County has about 460,000 people in it and 50% of them will be forced to switch to cable TV to get any signal at all.(about half have, talking to friends, about half still have antennas)
Now, if you're in some place like Illinois, well, you're out of luck, no matter how flat the land is. 50 miles or so out and you're without a strong enough signal. Either it works great or not at all. That's just wrong, IMO.
Dave... Your car is overdue for its oil change.
"Thank you - I'll wait a week."
I really think it would be best to take advantage of the special that they are running this week.
"I said no."
It is only $19.95. I hear they have free coffee.
"Darn it... where is that off button?"
"I can tell that you are unhappy with me, Dave."
(car starts driving itself to the dealership)
No, but given the lack of rules, oversight, and accountability, that 700 billion is going to pretty much go down a black hole and never be seen again.
I don't know of any economist right now who honestly thinks that the government is ever getting that money back. Not with the way things just keep getting worse and worse.
I know I'd rather have given NASA 700 billion than the banks. At least we'd get something for our tax dollars in the end.
I imagine that universities make incoming students sign some kind of document that give the university over student inventions created using university resources.
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This is only true if you receive compensation from them that requires you to sign such a contract. But few universities actually force the students to pay the full tuition. The reason that they charge so much is all a shell game, really.
The few who can pay it in cash they ignore - they likely are egotistical idiots or rich playboys. The rest they give generous stipends and grants and scholarships to. Since they're essentially paying themselves in this case, the actual cost of the "tuition" is whatever they want.
Seriously - how many grad students in technology do you know who didn't get some monetary compensation just so that they would sign those papers in case something good came out of their internship? Not one that I know of had to actually pay full price for grad school.
Think of it as like a factory rebate on a car. Everyone knows GM and Ford offers huge ones, so they expect them. Of course, with the university, it also comes with a piece of paper to sign. You get the degree for less money and they make money off of your ideas. Win-win, really.
And, honestly, if you really do have a cure for cancer or have cold fusion figured out, do something else for your PHD. If you're a mere mortal like the rest of us, ignore it all - nothing you're writing about for in a class is likely to be that earth-shattering. Shoot, it's more likely to be filed in some dark corner of their library and checked out once every decade.
- The real litmus test is whether you are taking classes normally or whether you are getting a scholarship. If you are paying money and going to classes out of your own pocket, everything that you do remains yours, unless there's a clear major project that you are working on with the university.(say, some electric car race or whatnot).
- If you are getting a scholarship, then yes, everything is theirs, pretty much. Just keep your better ideas to yourself and learn to just find other ways to solve the problems - or use more basic approaches. Obviously if the work is in conjunction with your thesis or PHD or similar, then you're kind of stuck. Do your work, but keep your better ideas to yourself. This doesn't mean to be paranoid. Merely to be a bit cautious. Give away some ideas that are required, but not everything.
- I found that the biggest problem wasn't professors but other lazy and greedy students who would leech ideas off of others in a heartbeat. Telling your friends about some great idea at a party is sure to end up being used by whomever is listening. As they say, don't talk shop outside of work.
- Also don't talk about it online or leave your latest and greatest ideas out in the open where roommates and others can see them. It's not paranoid to have a password on your computer, after all.(same with carrying them around in your backpack or similar places where some nosy person in the library can get to them)
Consider how much energy it would take to move this massively long cable. There is no way in hell that is going to be efficient. You're going to be wasting a massive amount of energy as you move the entire cable the whole time the thing is climbing.
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If the entire system is powered from the ground, we have essentially unlimited power available. Just build a couple of reactors nearby to power it exclusively. The major problem with getting materials up to space isn't a lack of power, it's a lack of space to hold the fuel. And, of course, the safety factor. Nearly one in every 30 launches still is a failure (3% even with the best technology). This appears to do away with all of that. At least for the trip up.
http://www.g2mil.com/safety.htm
It's horribly dangerous to try to get up to and back from space. Speed isn't the real issue here.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html
It costs 450 million to do a single Shuttle launch. That buys a LOT of electricity or other fuel down on the ground to power a space elevator. Honestly, I can't imagine how much fuel that would buy. Dozens? Hundreds of climbs? It's worth exploring this technology in any case, as the potential long term savings is huge.
The real cause, though, appears to have been a design change in the shuttles. Originally the design called for titanium throughout the ship instead of aluminum. But it was deemed to be far too expensive when they were first built, so they went with Aluminum.
As a result, it weighed a LOT more, which required heavier shielding with less margin for error, the solid fuel boosters(added), and it barely made it into orbit instead of being able to get up to nearly geostationary orbit as originally planned. And it was much harder to fly and land - so much so that it really "flies" more like a typical plane with its engine off.(read: like a brick).
Compare the heat resistance of the two metals. I suspect that if the wings had been made out of titanium, it would have taken another minute or two to reach a catastrophic failure. This *might* have been enough to at least get into the lower atmosphere.(in theory allowing some sort of ejection/safety system to function?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_thermal_protection_system
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The Space Shuttle thermal protection system (TPS) is the barrier that protects the Space Shuttle Orbiter during the searing 1650 C (3000 F) heat of atmospheric reentry.
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Aluminum melting point: 1220 F Aluminum burns at ~6920F once it starts doing so, though, and as such is pretty near self-sustaining and impossible to put out as long as there is material to burn.
Titanium melting point: 3034 F Titanium burns at ~ 5300F once it gets going and is just as hard to put out. (burning metals like this are bad as a rule)
A drastically lower weight, though, would also allow for a slightly slower speed. Likely closer to 2500-2800 F which would technically make the heat shielding a redundant safety feature, at least on the wings.(they would melt and distort, but wouldn't actually catch on fire.
Mate, you're not tapping into anything. Everyone has varying night vision - it all depends on the number of rods you have on your retina and how well your eyes adapt to low light. So give it up with the night vision powers BS , you don't have it.
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The "trick" here is to use more of your eye consciously by de-focusing enough so that you block out the horribly distracting and bad in low light fovea(center of your vision). Think of it as learning to utilize more of the data that is coming into your eyes. People talk about how blind people typically amplify their other senses. It's possible to do this with any sense over time, even if the others are undamaged. I'm not seeing in the dark so much as using my brain's ability to turn up the gain.
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As for people seeing in infra red - err , no. That would require a major structural change to the rods or cones which wold require a common but as yet undiscovered genetic mutation. Apparently we all have some ability to see the very near infrared if the source is extremely bright but even that only extends a short way down.
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I mentioned body temperature because all of our senses fall within narrow ranges. But they all differ. Some people can hear upwards of 20khz. Some cannot hear low frequencies at all. People have varying body temperature set points. Mine is at 97.8. If I'm at 98.6, I'm running a slight fever. The same is true for the structure of the eyes as well as color vision. Some people see a tiny bit farther into the infra-red than others. Some people see four *primary* colors. Some see only two(color blind).(what I meant by "4 colors" in my post - my bad) The most obvious one, though, is how some people have an extra set of taste buds that react to bitter tastes. That's quite well known. The trick is to figure out what senses that you have that are slightly better than the norm and tapping into them. After all, the objective here is to not hit things. Not to actually "see" objects in low light.
Another interesting thing about this is that do you notice how you almost never actually run face-first into something in the dark? You almost always bump against it or bang into a corner.
There's also other differences as well. Some women, for instance, have see a fourth set of colors, which gives them a much greater low-light ability (a couple for every thousand women, IIRC) as well as do great things in the visual arts. Other people have vision that extends a bit beyond the normal ranges as well. A good example if this is the typical "normal" body temperature. It was obtained by sampling a large number of people and averaging the result. Vision, hearing, and other senses are similar. So it's not surprising that the occasional blind person can actually tap into these if theirs happen to naturally be more developed than normal.
By tapping into the secondary pathways like this, I can "see" about twice as well as most people in the dark(though it's not really "seeing" like reading a paper or like a cat does). And, as DynaSoar mentioned, I can literally run through areas at night and not hit things as long as there is even a tiny amount of light.(doesn't work in caves/absolute pith black - tried that - heh)
Note - the skill can be learned, though some see better at night than others. I suspect their vision is shifted a bit more towards the infrared or their iris' are a bit larger. It took me about 2-3 years to develop it when I was growing up. My friends and I always spent a lot of time playing outside at night and some of us got pretty good at avoiding things in the dark. The hard part was learning to just trust your instincts. It's a odd feeling, though, as you only notice things a split second before you normally would hit them if you're moving faster than walking speed.
I found that a trick to doing this - and you can try this as well - is to learn to defocus your eyes during the day. Animals do this to track movement. It's a common trick hunters also use to track and find game. If you can then also do this at night, it basically shuts off a lot of your brain's trying to strain itself in low light. Since the average person's brain normally focuses intently upon just a small area in front of them, expanding that to your entire field of vision makes a huge difference.(though as noted, you can't focus on specific objects at the same time) Often, even if you can't actually see details, your eyes will notice things like faint reflections, movements, and so on.
My ex? She's nearly completely blind about 5 minutes after dusk. Opposite end of the scale as it were.
Yup, seems monopolistic to me. Using the fact YOU are the only one able to sell OS/X (like windows) AND making sure you are the only one that can sell hardware for the underlying OS, even though you allowed clone machines, by breaking it during update cycles.
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The reason they weren't was because they actually made their own hardware and motherboards. So they technically COULD say what was done with their hardware(or so the argument went).
But think about this:
IBM makes a chip and motherboard(could be ASUS or whomever, I don't know for each model). This is a normal off the shelf OEM component that is for sale to anyone. Apple is using it and installs a special set of chips/modifies it so that only that board can now run their OS.
Basically what Apple is doing is... the same thing Psystar is doing!
They are taking someone else's motherboard and hacking it to work with their OS. They have no legal leg to stand on here. Only the maker(s) of the motherboard that they are buying technically has a say about the matter of what other companies are doing with it(barely at that, even).
But the thing is... The makers of said motherboards aren't playing along with Apple's monopoly. They have Apple in a position where they can't do a thing to keep them from selling identical boards to PC builders. Apple wants to use cheap commodity hardware and remain proprietary. Not going to happen.
The most obvious thing that points to it being a "convenient accident" is that the guy himself was afraid for his life and his lawyer was trying to get him into witness protection at the time.
Sad but true. It's unfortunately all too easy to make bad things happen with aircraft, cars, and other potentially dangerous machinery(WHY he was even flying in the first place...) Selling your soul and playing with fire... well, these sorts of things do happen. I'd feel sorry for him, but I think he should have known what was going to likely happen to him when he started down this path back then.
Of course they do! When they SELL a retail copy of OS X, they are OBLIGATED to license it to whoever buys it! And that's REGARDLESS of what the new owner wants to do with it...
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Exactly right. I think there is a potentially larger issue at work here. To date, nobody has brought this issue to the courts. See, 90%+ of EULA boilerplate is unenforceable rubbish. If you bought an item as an *individual*, of course you can do whatever you want with it short of reselling it or other business-like practices. Once this hits the fan and court makes a ruling, EULAs will essentially evaporate. Also, Apple's "can't install this on non-apple hardware" clause is also unenforceable and can safely be ignored, for the same reason. They can say anything that they wish in that EULA, but it's exactly the same as say, buying a Craftsman driver and having Sears say that you can't use non-Craftsman sockets with it. They may not fit very well, but there's nothing to stop you from trying, and nothing legally they can do about it, either.
Checking the dates, it does look like Apple forgot to register the version, which means physical damages only. Software is out, because Psystar just bought retail copies and passed them along to the end user for the same price.($0 loss there), and hardware - it's virtually identical. The only loophole that Apple could possibly have here is the motherboard. Psystar could be forced to cough up the price of an Apple motherboard(which has those special non OEM chips on it) only. All of the rest of the insides of a Mac is off-the-shelf stuff that can't be claimed as damages. (ouch?)
But it gets worse. Because of the three month "oops" by Apple, Physical damages means, at most, Apple's profit on each machine that they lost. Actual dollar and cent losses to their bottom line. Not retail costs. If that's only $50 or $100 per machine, then it doesn't make a dent in Psystar's operations.
A few reasons why Apple, IMO, is stupid to try to win this instead of settling out of court:
1:It forces the OS to be a separate entity, legally. This is almost a no-brainer to get a ruling on, since Apple is just re-using other makers' hardware. A couple of proprietary chips stuck onto some other maker's motherboard isn't going to hold much water I bet. Especially if they are only there to act as copy protection. Basically taking normal OEM stuff from ASUS or IBM or wherever and installing a lock/dongle of their own design on top of it. I'll let the legal experts here explain why Apple's toast on this one.
Apple really did this to themselves. They crawled into the "proprietary" hole while at the same time, moved to standard PC components(stopped actually making most of the hardware themselves). Only a matter of time before someone started taking the same components and building clones. There's a reason Sony still makes their own PS3 hardware. Once Apple started using commodity components, it was downhill from there.
2: It forces them to reveal their entire pricing structure and profit margins. If they are selling machines at only a tiny margin of profit(since the wholesale price of the OS can be subtracted from the machine's price in such a calculation, once they are ruled as two separate items), this may actually be a very small margin of profit.
Even IF the two aren't ruled as separate, this still sets in stone a limit for each model in recoverable damages for a clone, on a model by model basis(at most the cost of the motherboard in actual cost to Apple, since that's the only Apple specific part). At that point, Mac becomes essentially de-facto licensed. Pay the damages to Apple and you too can make and sell clones. The Clone makers will have a steep initial price, but can easily make it up on features and upgrades.
This forces Apple to be caught between a rock and a hard place. They have to build enough profit into each machine to keep the competition from paying them too little in damages. But they have to price it low enough to remain competitive. After all, charging $100 for an extra gig of memory is going to kill that price difference immediately. Charging $300 for a Hard drive that the competition is tossing in for $120... That's no longer going to work.